Feeding Sherlock
by Atlin Merrick
Summary: Sherlock habitually starved himself of everything: Food, sleep, sex. Fortunately John finally figured out how to get Sherlock to eat. To want to eat. To absolutely love it.
1. Chapter 1

**Feeding Sherlock**

First impressions are wonderful things. If you're careful, they can be lasting. If you're unlucky, they'll never fade.

Here are the first impressions Sherlock Holmes often trailed behind him like so much dirty glitter: Brilliant. Ruthless. Remarkable. Arrogant. Powerful. Vicious. Well-dressed. Predatory. Dramatic. Inhuman. Beautiful. Cold.

"Open your mouth."

John Watson would have had a few choice phrases to add to that stupid list, if any one had asked. No one ever did.

"Please?"

Wounded.

"Sherlock you have to eat."

Kind.

"Just a little."

Masochistic.

"One bite."

_Hungry._

For the fifth time in fifteen minutes John Watson held a sandwich up to his flatmate's mouth. His flatmate did not bite.

Once, many months ago John had asked Sherlock what purpose starving himself served. "It's pointless. Even machines need fuel." Sherlock's answer had surprised him.

"Hunger gives me power, John. Focus. Resolution. By mastering this most basic part of my body I also master my mind." He'd smiled then. "Besides, too much fuel just floods a machine's engine."

Sitting catty-corner to Sherlock at the kitchen table, John watched his lover watching nothing. He'd been sitting there for a half hour, coaxed from his bed by the promise of hot tea he'd ended up not drinking. John looked at him. _Paper._ That's what Sherlock looked like. As if he'd been cut out from a piece of paper and propped on the chair. He looked flat.

John knew why, of course. Sherlock couldn't solve every case, even he knew that. But this time the detective had actually seen the suffering caused by the crime; was there for the dying. He never had been before.

"Please, Sherlock. For me. One bite. Or drink the tea at least."

The detective glanced at the sandwich that persistently hovered and imagined John feeding children at a hospital. Could see it clear as day, John the friendly doctor who would take the time to talk to a sick child. To bring a treat. To spoonfeed the second mouthful to a little one after he'd pretended to eat—and relish—the first. John of the infinite patience. John of the infinite love. John, John, John who never stopped trying.

"Stop trying, John."

What use was it anyway? John could work for a hundred years to make him a better person and for one hundred and one of them Sherlock would screw up, miss a vital clue, say the wrong word, and—

"Fuck you."

The detective's head whipped around, his mouth dropped open, and he looked as if a hive of angry bees had just materialized in the chair next to him. The sandwich was shoved against his mouth and he bit it despite himself.

John was no Sherlock, but he observed and was perfectly capable of making deductions based on those observations. After a year of living with this over-large child prodigy, after nearly nine months of being his lover, he knew of the man's sometimes crippling depressions, his self-doubts, his persistent belief that being a genius meant that he had to—must be—perfect. And he'd learned the best way to help his lover past these times was to go wherever his gut led him.

"Don't bore me Sherlock."

That lovely mouth fell open again (this was going better than planned), and John shoved the sandwich against it. More biting, chewing.

"Telling me what to do with my time is boring. And it's worse when _I'm_ bored because I don't have half the resources you do to combat the boredom. So shut up and stop being boring."

Surprise. Open. Shove. Bite. Chew. Swallow.

"Do what you do so well. Impress me. You say that you can delete things from your 'hard drive.' Well prove it. Delete this case. Write over it. Erase the damn thing."

Sherlock was still wallowing around inside his head, John could see it, could see the snit as it crawled onto the detective's face, could practically hear the cutting remark as it formed, pithy and brief. "Stuff it. Whatever you were going to say, you can just stuff it. Or better yet, stuff this."

This time Sherlock didn't bite right away, instead he briefly leaned over and closed his lips around a dab of mustard on the back of John's hand, sucking it away without being aware he did it.

An idea flickered in John's mind briefly; just a flicker and then it was gone. He shook his head. "Now answer me because you love me Sherlock. You do, don't you? Actually, answer that. I need to hear the words."

Sherlock's brow furrowed and he leaned forward in his chair a little, mouth open like a baby bird. John lifted a spoonful of soup into it this time, then another and another when Sherlock stayed there, waiting again and again to be fed.

Finally the not-quite-as-thin-as-before man said, "I know that you know that I love you John. I know that you're asking me to say it because you're trying to make me stop thinking. But I'll let you play this transparent mind game because as we all know, I love to hear my own voice and so here are the details, all lined up: I love you so much that I eat. I eat food every day when before…well I don't know what I ate or how much or when. I've put on six and a half pounds since you've moved in and frankly I hate it, it makes me feel heavy and thick and slow, but I will try to eat because if I don't eventually you stop eating, too. Yes, yes you do.

"I will also sleep more not because I need it or because it makes you smile when I cuddle up to you at night, or because it makes you randy as a rabbit to wake up to me some mornings, but because you don't dream when I'm with you, you sleep in peace.

"I'll also have sex with you whenever you want me because it makes you love me more, need me more, want me more, which means that maybe you'll stay, or stay longer than you would if I didn't. And sex makes you happy. And smarter—Yes, yes it does! Though I think it makes me dumb for awhile, but that's okay, it passes the time—don't give me that face, I don't mean it's like watching telly or something, I mean it…it takes me out of my head and…and it puts me in yours and that's a very nice place to be, all right?

"Also for you I will not use drugs, because well, when I'm with you I don't need them. Even boredom is better with you John. I'll still complain about it but at least, with you, well it's not so bad.

"So yes John H. Watson, doctor of medicine, soldier of war, lover of one grateful Sherlock Holmes, I do love you. All right?" In final punctuation, Sherlock leaned forward again, and opened his mouth.

The soup was a long time coming. John was a little busy pretending he had something in his eye. Well, both of them.

It wasn't until much later that night, as he lay awake in bed, Sherlock curled around him and sleeping the sleep he claimed he did not need, that the good doctor remembered his flickery idea from the afternoon.

John grinned wolfishly into the dark. Such a simple, elegant sexy little idea it was. So perfect. He finally knew how to get Sherlock to eat. To _want_ to eat. To absolutely, god damn love it.

* * *

_Reviews are always appreciated, treated kindly, named, and fed well, so please share one...Thank you!_


	2. Chapter 2

"Taste it."

Hovering over a fungus-riddled Petri dish that was, of course, on the kitchen table, Sherlock tilted his head away from the proffered spoon. "John please, if I put even one mucus drop too much on these spores the experiment is ruined."

The doctor waved the spoon dramatically. "So finish and taste."

John's gesturing splattered spaghetti sauce onto the tabletop and into the hand he cupped under the spoon. It was this second splash that caught Sherlock's eye.

"Oh for heaven's sake," muttered the detective. He put the pipette down, grabbed John's wrist, and licked the small pool of marinara from the other man's palm.

Nodding, turning back to the experiment, he said, "Yes, very nice. Do enjoy. Sorry I won't be joining you, I have to finish this and it's going to take all night."

John didn't complain, just smiled as Sherlock went back to his experiment, his tongue repeatedly snaking out of his mouth and over his lips.

* * *

"What?" Leaning over a tray balanced precariously on the kitchen counter, John glanced at Sherlock, who was frowning at him from the doorway.

"It's cold out. The holidays are coming. I was inspired. Is there a law?" John rubbed at his forehead with the back of one flour-dusted hand.

Sherlock crossed his arms, said nothing. The doctor shrugged, turned back to putting dollops of blackberry jam into thirty six fresh-baked thumbprint cookies.

Humming lightly, the good doctor dropped spoonfuls of the thick, dark jam like it was going out of style. As he did so he tried very hard not to smile and was, he believed, mostly successful. And then it happened. Finally.

"For heaven's sake," Sherlock mumbled, striding forward. As soon as he was within reach the detective grabbed his lover's head firmly, licked a bright, luscious smear of jam from the other man's cheek. For a moment Sherlock lingered, frowning, then muttering, strode away. The second he disappeared from view John indulged in a small happy dance.

* * *

John knows that by now Sherlock gets it. Probably got it after that first time, but he wants to do it again anyway, just once more.

He picks a tiny restaurant in Shepherd's Bush called Odessa, it's claim to fame: "real Texas ribs." John would call them over-cooked, over-large, and frightening but the quality of the food isn't the point.

Sherlock refuses to order so John bravely tucks in to his meal alone. Fortunately it takes only seconds for the barbecue sauce—which is a veritable lake on the chipped porcelain plate—to find its way onto the doctor's fingers, lips, face.

It takes less than that for Sherlock to reflexively tug John's hand away from his appalling food, and to suck the sticky sauce from each finger. Then, leaning over the table, he cups John's face in his palms, licking him clean like a mother cat, or like a six foot man who's developing a very nice food-off-my-boyfriend fetish.

* * *

The film was actually almost not boring. Sherlock however, wasn't watching. He was waiting. Patiently.

Sitting beside him on the couch, in the dark, John was watching. He loved science fiction films. So he was paying attention. He was also feeding Sherlock. Slowly.

Instead of watching the television screen, the only source of light in the dim sitting room, Sherlock watched the doctor's left hand. In it there appeared, one at a time, a succulent kernel of popcorn. Very buttery, very salty.

Sherlock hated popcorn. It stuck in your teeth, it was squishy when it should be crunchy, crunchy when it should be squishy, and it didn't even fuel the transport, not really.

Sherlock loved popcorn. When it was buttery and salty and hot and fed to him carefully and slowly by Dr. John Watson.

Aaaand, there it was. The next morsel was lifted, held steady in space, and Sherlock leaned over and carefully plucked it from John's fingers with his lips.

Did John know that each time he held a kernel up for Sherlock, who was sitting so close beside him on the couch that their hips mashed together, he opened his mouth, too? And if Sherlock took his time removing a kernel, John's tongue would briefly wriggle out, though his eyes would never leave the screen? Sherlock took his time every third kernel. At least.

Also, did John know that Sherlock has had an erection since the seventh kernel of popcorn, when the deductive genius finally realized _precisely_ how much he liked eating anything—anything at all, and he meant that because he'd been testing the concept mentally for the last half hour, imagining himself eating human eyeballs or gently nibbling on raw sheep entrails—so long as these things have been fed to him by John?

Another succulent kernel, waiting for him. This time Sherlock touched it with his tongue, which curled under it, sort of lapping it out of John's thumb-and-forefinger grasp.

Sherlock glanced at the clock left of the television. The movie was not even half over. And there was enough popcorn to last through the very last credit and Sherlock, sitting there with a display of more patience than he has probably shown every day of the last twelve months combined, was so quietly happy he could bust.

The only way this could get better was if…

There in the dark, Sherlock blushed. Which made him blush harder because he didn't even know his body had the proper _mechanisms_ for blushing. Apparently it did.

Ah, another kernel. Sherlock leaned close, bared his teeth, carefully bit into a small salty explosion.

The only way this could get better was if…he could…Sherlock's left hand drifted from the couch to the crotch of his trousers. He wanted to say something about the bulge there. Sort of wave his arms and bring it to John's attention. But then John would stop feeding him popcorn one delicious kernel at a time, so he didn't. Instead the detective placed his hand on his own—

_Smack._

Sherlock froze, the only movement his eyes swiveling to John's face. But the doctor wasn't looking at him, his gaze was still fixed to the flickering screen as if he hadn't just slapped his lover's hand clean away from his own cock.

Sherlock frowned. The game would now be called on account of forfeit, he knew it. John would stop fee—

Another kernel. _Thank god._

Cautiously, as if it might be plucked away at the last moment, Sherlock leaned in, opened his mouth…and felt John's fingers slide in, along with that single kernel of corn. Sherlock's low breathy sigh was timed with a particularly florid on-screen explosion, but still he checked John's expression, which, so far, was no expression but rapt attention to the film.

Good.

While he waited for the next morsel Sherlock wondered if possibly John was as achingly hard as he was. But between the way they were sitting and the poor lighting he couldn't see between the doctor's legs, not even a little. So he looked elsewhere.

John's neck. Look at that neck. It was a beautiful neck. Not as long or graceful as Sherlock's, no, but it was perfect, dusted now with a twenty-four hour growth of beard, and thrumming with a fast pulse—not racing, but not at rest either.

John's mouth. He loved John's mouth, which was thin and wide and turned down at the edges just a little when he smiled. It also did this thing sometimes when he was aroused, sort of opened a bit and pooched out, as if he was about to blow a kiss. It was doing that now.

John's hands. It didn't always happen, but once in awhile John's hands would shake when he was particularly turned on. Sherlock stared long and hard at both hands but neither seemed to tremble.

John's breathing. Ah, John's breathing. It was coming fast, faster than—Sherlock glanced at the television screen—anything in the film warranted. The consulting detective, now done detecting, smiled to himself in the dark and imagined the erection he couldn't see but knew was there.

When the next kernel of popcorn was raised and offered, Sherlock sucked John's fingers into his mouth along with it, moaning softly as if they were John's cock.

_Oh good lord._

The good doctor was _this close_ to flinging the bowl of popcorn across the room but. He. Heroically. Refrained. He clenched his teeth and closed his eyes and in great detail thought about sheep entrails (a clear plastic packet of them were in the fridge). There, that cooled him down. Good. He opened his eyes and stared hard at the television until his brain caught the film's plot once more. He had five hundred calories to get into the whip-lean body beside him and so help him he was going to do it if he had to smack his _own_ hand away from his own cock.

Sherlock's hot tongue probed at the delicate skin between John's fingers, licking away salt and butter in precisely the same way as he often licked away John's come.

Oh dear god, the doctor thought, it was going to be a very long night.

_

* * *

Hmm. Lots of build up. Glad there's going to be sex next chapter. Foody, foody, messy, calorie-laden sex._


	3. Chapter 3

After the movie that night Sherlock was very, very _oral._

In bed, in the dark, solemn as a disciple, he quietly, intently _licked—_as in wide, wet, squirmy tongue—pretty much every inch of John's body as if it were a lolly.

While the attention was rather…intriguing…John did get a little fuzzy and dreamy about twenty minutes in, his mind wandering, his breath slowing. And then Sherlock had started doing these small breathy moans with each lick and John focused fast.

By the time the good doctor came—loudly, raggedly, and for what felt like a long, bone-melting time—Sherlock was so primed, so ready to devour anything, that he not only swallowed, but licked every drop of come and every last hint of sweat from John's body. As a matter of fact, the doctor was pretty sure he was cleaner at the end of the sex than he'd been at the start. If clean is a relative term and means covered from hairline to heel in another man's spit.

Of course feeding Sherlock wasn't always bowl-of-popcorn easy.

During a case was the worst, because the detective got so distracted by clues, the high of the chase, the whole heady thrill of deduction, that he could easily ignore John wearing nothing but a raging hard-on and a tuba (should such a thing occur), much less a ham and cheese sandwich.

Feeding Sherlock by hand did work, though that was hardly surprising when talking about a man who couldn't fish his mobile from his own coat pocket. Which was how it came to be that, during a case, John now spent more time than he cared contemplate slicing sandwiches into tiny squares and stuffing them into his distracted lover's mouth.

It was Sherlock who taught his doctor a better way. Though credit really goes to Lestrade, for turning 47.

John had been at the Yard earlier that week, going over Sherlock's thoughts on three cases with the detective inspector, and for his troubles had been given a big slice of birthday cake to take home. Tall and gooey with far too much vanilla icing, John pretended to forget the cake in the gents, but Sally, of all people, ran it out to him in the parking lot before he could make good his escape.

In the fridge the cake sat for three days, until Sherlock needed room for a hollowed-out watermelon stuffed full of one pound coins (John didn't ask). Yet instead of throwing the sticky monstrosity out, the detective had stood in the sitting room doorway one night, cake in hand, and stared at his just-showered boyfriend, wrapped up in one of Sherlock's robes and dozing lazily on the couch.

Ferrets eating toast points with orange marmalade and reading The Times: That was John's dream. Not very exciting really, but it certainly beat The Sun, and when the bespectacled ferret started telling the ferret holding the parsnips the day's winning Lotto numbers, some part of John's brain grabbed a pen and—

—the ferret licked him.

John shifted, thought about moving away, but the ferret? The ferret was _good_ at this. As a matter of fact—

_"John."_

—the ferret knew his name?

"John." Very, very soft. Right at his ear. "John." A tongue, hot and wet _in_ his ear. "I'm hungry."

John Watson opened sleepy eyes to a sex scene already in progress.

It was Sherlock—very unferret-like—on his knees beside the couch, hovering over him like a pale wraith and dressed in nothing but one of John's tattered robes.

The detective gave the hair below John's ear a tiny tug. "There you are."

John smiled a little, yawned, his hand automatically rising to his mouth because something felt—

_"No."_

Sherlock caught his arm. "No, don't. Let me."

Dipping his head down with a small sigh, the detective gently, thoroughly, slowly licked at John's mouth, a very large cat with a saucer of very warm cream.

As he pulled away, John's tongue automatically snaked over his own lips. A faint taste of…vanilla.

_Oh._

Sherlock watched his lover's dark eyes, saw him putting the pieces together, waited patiently for the one thing he rarely asked for from anyone else: Permission.

With a slow blink the good doctor untied the belt of the robe he wore, opened it wide, let it fall.

Sherlock's gaze swept over five prone feet and seven glorious inches of bare naked skin, a beautiful canvas._ Thank you,_ he wanted to say, _thank you for this, for last night, for the week before, for the month before that. Thank you, always thank you._

Instead he reached behind him to the coffee table, dragged fingers through thick, sweet frosting, then, tongue pressed between teeth, began painting his canvas.

The first strokes: Two sweet slashes over each of John's cheekbones, a lovely war paint. The second, at the hollow of his throat; the third, each nipple; the fourth, in John's belly button, a little growl from both of them when Sherlock's finger dipped inside.

Breathing a little faster now, the detective reached behind him again, this time coming away with much more paint for his canvas.

Application was more liberal now, faster, with thick lines drawn between John's ribs, over hip bones, down his belly. Sherlock paused, studied, nodded. Time to finish this masterwork, yes, very much time.

One more visit to his "paint" pot, one more sugary sweet stroke…this one all over John's even sweeter erection.

Sherlock's mouth was absolutely watering.

Well then, time to eat.

He moved up, cupped John's face in his hands, ghosted a kiss across his lips, then delicately nibbled-licked-sucked at John's stubbled cheeks, until they were pink, grinning, and no longer sweet.

Next the detective's tongue plunged into the hollow at the base of John's throat, a delicious tremor shooting through him when John laughed, then squirmed. Nipples followed, two pert little nubs drenched in sticky sweetness, sucked clean with such devotion that the squirming was joined by murmurs of _oh yes,_ and _yes please._

After that things got a little muddled. Did Sherlock lave John's belly bare of frosting and lick at rib shadows, or did he nibble hip bones clean and then plunge his tongue into that sweet sexy little belly button?

It didn't matter, really because it all led to the same place in the end. To John's very hard—Sherlock licked his lips—very erect—he snaked out his tongue—very _tasty_ looking cock.

Sherlock bowed his head and ran his tongue from the erection's base, to its dripping tip, his senses flooding with the taste of vanilla, a salty tang, the sound of breathless moaning. _Oh, it was so very much time._

Sherlock closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and took the doctor in as far as he would go. Almost immediately one of John's hands came to rest on his lover's head, holding him down while he thrust up, hard and fast.

Sherlock groaned softly, almost a pleading sound, and the good doctor opened his legs wider, pumped harder. And that's when Sherlock felt it…John's hand snaking down, reaching, tugging, pulling, until Sherlock's sticky fingers were in the doctor's mouth.

_Oh good lord._

As Sherlock rocked on his knees, sucking, the doctor sucked Sherlock's fingers. Which, apparently, were now connected directly to his cock because each touch of John's mouth caused a spasm between Sherlock's legs, and a growing certainty that, without a single finger laid upon himself, he was going to come.

_Oh good lord._

And then there it was again, that tugging, so persistent, so distracting. Sherlock raised his head, growling, and that's when John's fingers slid into his dark hair and he _pulled._ Hard.

Sherlock growled again, low and raw, but he followed that pull, crawling onto the couch and over his lover, straddling his hips, looking down at him, suddenly wondering if his own pupils were as large, his own eyes as full of desire.

_Oh yes,_ John would have said if asked, but he said nothing, did just one thing: Thrust his hips up, slowly, over and over, until his lover started doing the same.

They weren't quite aligned cock-to-cock, but that was okay, perfect, just right. Off center gave all the delicious friction without too much direct pressure, heightening the need, prolonging the pleasure.

_Pleasure._

It was building fast, a tension between the legs, a liquid fire, a _need_ so strong that it clamped Sherlock's eyes closed, pulled a low groan from the back of his throat. He wanted to hold on, to make it last, to hear his lover cry out first, but when John shoved his fingers, suddenly thick with cake and frosting, into Sherlock's mouth, well, the detective was well and truly done for, coming very, _very_ sweetly all over John's belly, the doctor not too far behind him.

_

* * *

One more chapter, because, seriously, who can stop? I believe there were requests for chocolate-dipped strawberries? And also for a chocolate-covered banana. Any other ideas?_


	4. Chapter 4

The carnage…_the carnage was everywhere._ The room, quite simply, was a bloodbath.

It's not that John hadn't been prepared for the sight, but the breadth of the mess…well no lie: John was traumatized and it didn't take a deductive genius like Sherlock Holmes to see it. Briefly the good doctor wished for a shock blanket.

"How?"

That self-same deductive genius stood beside John and shook his head, for once as mystified as his colleague. "Seriously John, _how?"_

It all started…well to say innocently would be a lie. There was most certainly premeditation, but honestly no _real _harm had been intended. And yet the evidence, the _red, dripping evidence_ was all over the living room wall, on the rug, the coffee table, the couch, it was even damn well on both lamps.

If push came to shove, John would blame Sherlock for acting out of character. This was his fault, no doubt about it. All Sherlock had needed to do was say "No, thank you," as he always did. _As he always did,_ and none of this would have happened.

Instead he had said yes. Again. And again. And again. _And again._

"Seriously?"

That was John, three hours previous.

"Really?"

Sherlock bent low over a large pile of compost in their kitchen sink. A bucket of the slop had been taken from the garden of a murdered MP and Sherlock was searching the mess for a rare worm that would give the MP's husband his alibi.

"You never say yes," John said, hands in the air, one fisted around a wine glass, the other around a magnum of wine.

"Found you!" Sherlock scooped the elusive worm out of the compost with a tea cup—John's favorite, of course—and placed it in an empty butter tub, which he then immediately put down so he could jump happily around the kitchen. "Well I'm saying yes tonight. Now pour, John, pour!"

The first glass went down fast and easy, as Sherlock and John discussed the case, John asking questions and taking notes for the blog. The second glass they enjoyed in the living room, in between texts to and from Lestrade. By the time they were on their third, Sherlock broke character again and said, "I'm hungry, what's for dinner?"

Giddy with wine, John was tempted to say, "Me," but there was no way he'd get an erection now, not with three glasses in him. And besides, Sherlock asking for food was even rarer than the smelly little worm wiggling around in the butter tub.

Spaghetti was about the only thing John had the coordination to make when drunk, but even that turned into a production when Sherlock followed him into the kitchen, then followed him _all over the kitchen, _barefoot, talkative, and tipsy.

By the time the pasta was done, and the sauce made, Sherlock was either on his fifth glass of wine—which couldn't be as they'd run out two glasses ago—or he was drinking blood. It said so much that John wouldn't be surprised either way.

"I want lots of sauce on it," the detective said, his words all mushy and smiley. "Lots of sauce." Standing together at the stove, Sherlock rested his chin on John's shoulder, watched him fill two bowls. "Saucy. It should be very, very saucy." Sherlock snaked a hand beneath John's jumper, "Like you."

"Shit!"

John jerked away reflexively from the hot stove element, stomped hard on—and tripped over—Sherlock's bare foot, and both men went down.

Sitting up fast, Sherlock grabbed John's hand, checking the burn. "How badly does it hurt?"

Prone on the floor, John did one of his endlessly-fascinating John things: He laughed. "Oh, I'm okay. It was just…I just got surprised. My reactions are all catty-wampus with the wine. Is that blood?"

Sherlock frowned hard at John's wrist, "Blood? No, it's just very red and—"

"Noooo. What you're drinking. It can't be wine, we ran out and yet still you have…well, something."

Sherlock made an "ah ha" face, grabbed his glass from the kitchen table. "It's wine. Mrs. Hudson brought it by last week. Gift from a friend, but Mrs. Hudson doesn't like red." The detective snagged his lover's wrist again, dipped his finger in the wine, let a few drops dribble over John's burn, then blew on it.

John sighed, "Oh, that's a bit better, thank you."

So Sherlock did it again. Then again. The third time he took a mouthful of the wine, leaned over, and passed it into his lover's mouth. They went through an entire glass this way, there on the floor, before Sherlock said huskily, "Time for dinner."

John was surprised. And then not surprised at all. For many, many weeks he'd been trying to develop this very simple connection in Sherlock's over-active brain: Sex = Food. Apparently the pathway was more developed than he'd realized.

So they had dinner. With more wine. Which so clearly wasn't a good idea _later_ but at the time seemed a marvelous plan.

Which was why it also seemed like a marvelous plan to use one another's naked bodies as bowls, and their fingers and mouths as flatware. On the floor. In the living room. Of course.

"Stop wiggling."

"It's hot."

"It's been in the fridge for five minutes. With the sauce."

"It tickles."

"Good." Sherlock smiled, and continued dropping small slippery bunches of spaghetti onto John's stomach and chest.

Stretched out on the rug, a pillow under his head, John grinned back and felt as benevolent as a Buddha watching his lover, all intent, focused, eyes bright, breathing heavily. _I'd bathe in pasta sauce or gravy or melted chocolate, just to see that look on your face._

Fortunately he didn't have to, all he had to do was _just stop wiggling. _But when Sherlock dribbled teaspoonfuls of sauce over the pasta John couldn't help it. "It _tickles!"_

In a flash Sherlock was on top of him, using his size and weight to hold John still. "Don't move," the detective whispered, legs around his lover's hips, hands pressing his shoulders down, an entire messy meal untouched between their bodies.

John stilled. After a moment he bit his lip, smiled a small smile, then said very softly, "Well? Eat me."

Sherlock groaned, suddenly famished. He wriggled down John's body until his mouth was over one tomato-y nipple. He then proceeded to suck.

At first there was a hint of basil, then a touch of pepper, a little cayenne. After that, the flavor was much more complex and simply the most delicious thing Sherlock had ever put in his mouth: all salty-sweet John.

It took awhile, but the attentive detective eventually made it to the other nipple, which cleaned up as nicely as the first.

Then the real fun began.

Sliding down a little more Sherlock opened his mouth and lapped up a mouthful of pasta. He messily slurped up the second. He nibbled the third. Then he sorta-kinda-on-purpose _bit_ at the fourth and John's resulting wriggle made Sherlock _hungrier,_ if that was possible. And so he continued to nibble, slurp, bite, suck, until he was really quite full and really rather hard.

Then John did another one of his endlessly-fascinating John things. He sat up and shoved his tongue in Sherlock's mouth, snaked one hand down and began stroking until his lover was _all_ hard, then he lay down on his belly, and arched his back.

Sherlock's breathing got a little faster and a lot more ragged as he stretched his long body down over John's, snaking his arms around the other man's chest. "I love you," he said so softly no one else on earth could have heard the words except the one man they were meant for.

John tilted his head back, rubbed it against Sherlock's chin. "I love you too, you giant dope," he said with a laugh.

Sherlock nibbled at sandy hair a moment, then whispered, "Ready?"

In answer John arched his back again and spread his legs.

Sherlock withdrew an arm from around John and licked at his palm. He ran his hand over his own cock, then licked again, stroked again, until, between his own saliva and pre-come he was about as lubed as he could get.

He pressed his face into John's neck, then pressed his cock into John's body. The good doctor groaned.

For a moment Sherlock moved only the barest few degrees. He loved the incredible feeling…well it was almost pain…when he moved only enough to light a flame in nerve endings, but then did nothing to put out the fire.

John growled a warning beneath him, making Sherlock's breath hitch and then hold. The muscles in the doctor's back and legs went hard. "God damn it Sherlock," he hissed, _"move."_

And oh dear god Sherlock loved _that_ just as much.

Yet even though his cock ached, and his muscles trembled, still Sherlock did not move.

"Now," growled the doctor, his voice hoarse, but shot through with _that _tone, the one Sherlock never would have believed he'd like, the one of a man used to giving orders and having them obeyed.

"Fuck. Me. Now."

Sherlock's body shook despite him and despite him he started thrusting. He started slowly, he usually did, but John was having none of it. Despite the fact that half Sherlock's weight held him down, despite their size difference, John pushed both their bodies up until he was on hands and knees, Sherlock still very much, very deeply inside him.

John arched his back yet again, hung his head, and groaned loudly through gritted teeth.

Broad shoulders—Sherlock thrust—broad back—pulled nearly all the way out—narrow waist—he thrust again, harder—Sherlock feasted on the sight of John's body, let it take his reason, and finally let it take his control.

"John," he warned, hips pumping very fast now, cock buried with each thrust, "oh John." The doctor reached around, grabbed at Sherlock's hip with one hand, scraped his nails hard over pale flesh.

And that was it—the brief, welcome pain sent Sherlock over the edge, and digging his own fingers into John's hips, he stuttered his lover's name as he came.

_

* * *

_

_To be continued next chapter, wherein we discover what caused the carnage on the walls, the couch, the lamps, and the bookshelf, and wherein one Dr. John Watson comes despite himself—and with a little help from his (boy)friend._

_And thank you Kijo Kurosaki for the suggestion of spaghetti!_


	5. Chapter 5

It would have been better for the wallpaper if that night had ended there, but it didn't, and it wasn't, and for ten days after they had to keep Mrs. Hudson out of the flat so they could not only repaper two walls but replace the rug, five throw pillows, and the cushion of one chair.

The wine was to blame, of course. And frankly, people who don't drink shouldn't drink and Sherlock Holmes rarely drank. Why that night was an exception even he couldn't later deduce, but after the food, the sex, and what was probably a ten minute catnap curled next to John on the floor—a rare trifecta of self-indulgent normality for the detective—Sherlock was in a rare and dangerous mood: He was…_playful._

"No, Sherlock."

Still curled up on the floor, the detective opened one eye and watched his fingers walk across John's torso, toward the ribs on the other side.

The doctor grabbed his lover's hand and said again, "I said no."

Since when did no ever stop Sherlock Holmes?

"Okay."

Suspiciously casual, Sherlock sat up, grabbed a full wine glass from the coffee table, and swallowed it down with a flick of the wrist. For a moment he swayed a little, smiled at some private joke, and then poured more wine.

John sat up, grabbed the glass from him and said, "You've had enough."

Well John was just all _sorts_ of bossy tonight, wasn't he? Maybe John was tense. Maybe John was…what was the word? Oh, yes. _Uptight._ Sherlock abandoned his vague plan to tickle John into oblivion. Maybe, just maybe, John needed—as the Americans were always saying in their movies—maybe John just needed to get _laid._

Sherlock bit his lip in what he hoped was a provocative manner, and sort of oozed back onto the floor dragging John with him. "It's time to thuck you, John." The detective's eyes flew wide. "Uh oh."

The lisp. The dreaded lisp. The only-when-extremely drunk-or-bone-meltingly-tired lisp of Sherlock's childhood had come to haunt him.

The tall man blinked rapidly down at the short man for a few seconds, shook his head and tried again. "It'th…mmm…_it'th_…damn…John, I am going to…to…tttthuck—fuck!"

Then the world was shaking apart beneath him. No, no, it wasn't an earthquake it was John, John having a fit of hysterics there on the floor, laughing hard and _petting_ him, petting Sherlock's head as if he were a damn _bunny rabbit._

Oh, _that_ was just going to have to _thtop!_ (Yes, Sherlock was so drunk he lisped in his own head, too.)

!*SPLAT*!

And thus, it began.

"Oh no you did not," the doctor whispered, his laughter choked off as if murdered. He touched his chest, felt a cold, slippery pile of spaghetti slap-mashed there.

For many, many seconds the ex-soldier lay there on the floor in complete stillness and unnerving silence. Then John did yet another one of his endlessly-fascinating John things.

!*SMEAR*!

John rubbed an oozy-dripping handful of pasta sauce into Sherlock's hair. _Into his very pretty hair._

Sherlock was incensed. The game? The game was _on._

Wine? Meet John's head. John's head, meet Sherlock's wine. Oh, and hell? Kindly do meet handbasket.

To Mrs. Hudson, torn brutally from the finale of The X Factor, it suddenly sounded like a herd of jogging elephants up there in 221B. Jogging elephants careening from the walls. And possibly breaking the furniture. Then she heard it: laughter. That was even rarer than jogging pachyderms. Or had been before John had moved in with Sherlock and changed everyth—

At the sound of the crash, the fall, and the swearing Mrs. Hudson was half out of her chair…and then there it was again: Hysterical baritone laughter, wave after wave of it. John and Sherlock's landlady sighed and settled back into her chair. "You make him laugh Dr. Watson. You keep him in stitches. The _good _kind."

While the woman who was not their housekeeper turned half an ear back to the telly, and kept the other tuned for mirth, John flung a handful of spaghetti at Sherlock's head and missed. Half the pasta landed on top of the blazing lightbulb of the table lamp, the other stuck to the flocked wallpaper with surprising tenacity. They didn't notice the burning smell as the spaghetti cooked on the bulb. Not then anyway.

Foiled by his nimble flatmate, John growled in frustration and turned to grab up another handful of sauce. As he spun around to fling it, Sherlock snatched up the doctor's laptop and held it to his face, a high-tech shield.

!*Splat*!

_Oh no he didn't._

Sherlock's groin—bare naked, penis just hanging out there in the breeze and essentially asking for it—dripped with thick, cold, marinara.

Shocked, amazed, Sherlock looked down at his body and blinked. And so help him John could read his mind, read it as clearly as if the man was yelling out every thought in his crazy, brilliant head.

John made it to the fridge one half second before Sherlock and threw his own bare naked body against its metal door. "If you so much as touch those by-now-putrid sheep entrails I will…I will…" For a second the good doctor could think of no threat profound enough to override Sherlock's driving desire to win this food fight.

And then John had it (and from here on would always have it, for this threat? This threat would work, every time).

"…call Mycroft. And I will ask him to come to the house. And then I will leave the house with him. And I will go to _his_ house. And we will talk, him and I. Maybe. _Maybe _we'll talk." John did not do anything so crude as add _nudge nudge wink wink._ But he was tempted to.

That's when Sherlock did one of his endlessly-fascinating Sherlock things.

"Mmmmmmmm…" he hum-vibrated-sang, "mmmmmmmm," he grabbed John's shoulders in two strong hands, "mmmmmmmm" his voice got lower, darker, _thick._ "Mmmmmm," he didn't seem to breathe, "mmmmiiiiine," he finally growled, mashing his mouth onto John's, sucking in a hard breath, pulling the air right out of the doctor's lungs.

It was the wine. Of course it was. Because under normal circumstance John would not have shoved all those beakers off the kitchen table and onto the floor and Sherlock wouldn't have let him. But he did and _he_ did and with Sherlock on his back on the table, John climbed up and on hands and knees hovered over his lover. "Mine," the good doctor said, eyes very wide and very bright.

"Yourth," lisped his sweetheart.

John's breath caught.

"Yes," whispered the doctor, bending low, his lover rising up halfway to meet him.

John grabbed the back of Sherlock's sticky head, holding him in that awkward position, holding him in the kiss, until he felt Sherlock's torso trembling from the strain.

Finally he pushed Sherlock down and waited. He didn't have to wait long.

"Do it," Sherlock whispered, "It'th time."

Top of the fridge. Lube. It was up there after an experiment that needed, apparently, lube. It took only a second to grab it, and a second for John to cover his own cock with it. It took a lot, lot longer for John to rub it onto Sherlock, _into_ Sherlock, who lifted his hips from the table so John could slide in one finger, then two, then three.

Awhile later, when his lover started pumping his hips in the air and against nothing John groaned. "No, no, no," he whispered, "hold on."

John climbed onto the tabletop again, waited for those thrusting hips to come back down to earth, then he spread Sherlock's legs gently and pushed inside him.

Smeared in pasta sauce, decorated with spaghetti strings, Sherlock Holmes was not the prettiest sight, but with eyes closed, arms thrown over his head, and bottom lip trapped between his teeth, he was the most beautiful thing John had ever seen.

Or heard. The whimpering, the soft desperate sounds coming out of him were a lush symphony, a reverent hymn, bringing John higher, making him harder.

"Sherlock," the doctor whispered at his ear, against his neck, into his hair, "Sherlock…is…mine."

In answer his lover shifted, wriggled until his right leg was over John's left shoulder. A raw breathy sound and he shifted again, both legs now in the air and John as deep inside him as it was possible to be.

The doctor pushed up on both hands, raising his chest, changing the angle of Sherlock's hips, amping up the breath-taking friction for both of them. Finally, Sherlock's desperate groping for his own cock was so gorgeous, so primal that it brought John to the edge.

"Shhhherlock iiiss..." John groaned hips pumping hard and fast.

"Mmmmmm," answered-hummed-keened the detective. _"Yoooourth."_

And that was it. With a last, deep thrust hard against Sherlock's pale, writhing body John groaned loudly and long as he came.

One storey below, a woman reached for a television remote.

Mrs. Hudson watched as much X Factor, Coronation Street, and Emmerdale as she did not because she particularly loved these shows, no. She watched because when the boys weren't sounding like a herd of jogging elephants they were…well, let's just say that being seventy-three didn't make a woman any less interested in some things than when she was thirty-three.

And trying to _not_ imagine what Sherlock was doing to get _those_ sounds out of the doctor…and then what the doctor was doing to Sherlock, well—Mrs. Hudson turned the volume up on the telly pretty loud.

_

* * *

Another chapter coming. This could be endless. I mean, people? They eat a lot. Even Sherlock has to…_


	6. Chapter 6

It started at about eight o'clock one morning a few weeks later, when Lestrade called. Tossing his mobile onto the nightstand, excited to have another case so soon (and this one actually sounded interesting), Sherlock bounded naked out of bed…only to crash right back into it.

"Oh. Ouch." To his great surprise every large muscle in his body absolutely _ached._ "John?"

Still curled under the covers, the doctor didn't open his eyes. If he kept them closed he could deny it was morning. He could pretend he was sleeping. He could go back to dreams. After last night he deserved it. "Yes, Sherlock?"

Silence. Then a slight shifting at the bed's edge. Then nothing for a good long while. John carefully opened one eye to the bare expanse of his lover's back. "Yes?"

Gingerly Sherlock laid down on top of the bedsheets, barking out a dry cough. "I think I'm broken."

John opened the other eye. "What?"

The younger man frowned at the ceiling, slowly shrugging his shoulders, wiggling his hips, and jiggling his legs, checking in with all major muscle groups. John propped himself up on an elbow to watch the show.

"I…I hurt all over."

With a quick frown John sent the horny boy in himself away, brought out the doctor instead. "Well, I'm not exactly surprised. I told you you were overdoing it as you were _doing_ it." He brushed Sherlock's hair out of his eyes and said, "You know, I think you have a fever."

Sherlock scowled at the ceiling, disinclined to agree with anything that implied his transport was in less than showroom condition.

"You really need to take better care of yourself, you know. Get some _normal_ exercise. Maybe take a vitamin. And definitely, definitely, avoid days like yesterday, okay?"

_Ah, yesterday._ It had really started like any normal day, Sherlock reading the newspaper, John hand-feeding his lover scrambled eggs (Sherlock ate more if John used his, you know, _actual hands)_. Then Lestrade had called with eight cases, _eight, _each only vaguely interesting (and Lestrade knew that), which was why the DI fibbed (with fingers crossed), telling Sherlock he desperately needed help with all eight _that day._

Of course the temptation to solve so many mysteries so quickly was too much for Sherlock's ego. The consulting detective instantly bet himself that he could resolve all of them by midnight of that night—in sixteen hours—and he did. The legwork had been vigorous and varied, and had required Sherlock to:

1) Run on purpose into the side of a moving cab.

2) Wade into the Thames up to his waist and walk for a quarter mile.

3) Climb two trees and scale one bridge abutment.

4) Wriggle on elbows and knees through an empty sewage pipe.

5) Walk nine dogs on short leashes all at once 'round Regent's Park.

6) Wave two semaphore flags for exactly thirty nine minutes.

7) Wield a ten pound sledgehammer until he'd punched a hole in a brick wall.

8) Try and ride a unicycle (from which he fell three times, though he still made the point he needed to make).

So. With all that, no wonder Sherlock's not-twenty-any-longer body ached everywhere. John knew better than to tell the younger man that he was getting older (mostly because John hated hearing it himself), so instead the good doctor said again: "Vitamins. You need vitamins—" The detective started waving his hands around as if brushing away a gnat. "—and an orgasm."

Sherlock's body stilled, he squinted one eye, said gracefully, "Eh?"

John twined fingers into his lover's hair. "You need endorphins coursing through those long, lean, creamy limbs. That delicious body needs a nice hot wash of adrenalin to take away the pain and—"

"Did you wake up hard again?"

"As a brick."

Sherlock sighed. He tried (sort of) to keep the sound of long-suffering from it (he failed). Even after a year together he was still figuring out how to say "no" nicely. John made him want to be nice, and it was one of the hardest things he'd ever tried to do. And that included sexing spiders and riding unicycles.

"John, I'm afraid I don't feel—"

The doctor leaned over and kissed his forehead. "I know, rest easy, I won't eat you. What I will do is get you paracetamol and some vitamins. I know I have some tucked around the flat somewhere."

John turned to rise, but Sherlock slipped a hand up and held him still by his hair. Was it wrong that the entire reason he now wanted sex was to make John forget about the vitamins?

It probably was. Sherlock would ask. Afterward. Maybe.

Still stretched out naked on top of the blankets, the "long, lean, and creamy" detective raised his arm over his head, took a deep breath, letting it fill his chest, broaden his back, make him look a little more…mmmmm…fuckable. "Can I," he whispered, "change my mind?"

John watched the show. But was torn. And no fool. He knew what piqued Sherlock's sudden interest. And he also knew he'd woke with an erection he could possibly dig to China with. Was it wrong for him to want the sex anyway?

It probably was. But that was okay. Wasn't it? Maybe.

Sherlock clinched the issue by pushing his tongue into John's mouth. John let the issue be clinched by sort of rolling his eyes into the back of his head, sliding on top of his lover, and grabbing at his own China-bound cock.

"Ltmmwtch."

The doctor sat up, hand falling away from his hard-on. "What?"

Spread out on the bed like a beautiful buffet (John had no idea why he was _this_ randy or why he kept thinking of Sherlock in romance-novel terms) Sherlock smiled up at him. "You've never let me really watch. Not like this, not in daylight." He put John's hand back on what was, yes, really…wow…a rather…my word…grandly…um…upright cock. Sherlock cleared his throat once, coughed twice. "Can I _watch?_ Please?"

_Please._ Even now, with Sherlock trying regularly to be nicer, hearing him say _please_ was just rare enough, just _submissive_ enough that it made John's heart trip harder.

Both of the doctor's hands fell to his sides. He looked down at his sweetheart. "Again."

His sweetheart looked up at him through long black lashes. For a few moments Sherlock quite intentionally said nothing because a little bit of nothing would make _something_ a lot more potent. Finally he reached out, took one of John's hands. "Let me watch," he whispered, tugging until the doctor slid further up along his body. "Please John…_please John."_

The doctor groaned softly, his free hand slowly drifting to his cock. When he wrapped his fist around it they both looked down.

Automatically Sherlock's mouth opened at the sight of the pre-come dripping from his lover's erection. And automatically the sight of Sherlock's tongue squirming, lapping at nothing, caused John to rise up on his knees.

As two hot hands slid up the back of his thighs, John Watson started to slowly wank off pretty much directly over his lover's face.

And it was good.

The feel of his own hand sliding tight along his cock…good. The pressure of his lover's long fingers digging into the back of his legs…really good. The sense that he could almost feel Sherlock's hot mouth wrapped around him…so very, very good.

When he was alone, John usually took his time masturbating, letting the tension grow for as long as he could stand it. When he was with Sherlock it was different. When he was with Sherlock he almost always felt, desperate, needy, _fast._ But today? Why it felt like he had all day.

Which left _Sherlock_ desperate, needy, and fast. "John, John, John," he chanted low, trying to entice his lover to quicker movements, trying to pull him down toward his mouth.

John resisted, closing his eyes and focusing on the tension gathering like quicksilver between his legs, on feeling his cock getting harder then harder still beneath his hand, on hearing Sherlock's breathing hitch.

And maybe he would have just gone on that way for awhile, taking himself higher and higher by heart-thrumming degrees, but for one thing. Sherlock coughed, then coughed again.

With a strength of will that quite frankly surprised him, John's hand slowed, stopped, fell away from possibly the most painfully hard erection he'd had since the age of seventeen. He looked down at his lover, and was pretty sure a hard stare could tip him over into coming at this point.

Sherlock looked up at him, eyes glazed, gaze unfocused, frowning. "Don't stop," he whispered, "don't stop."

Most of the blood in John's body was right now between his legs, which left precious little to fuel his brain, so it took the doctor a couple seconds to gather his thoughts, then get them into and then out of his mouth. "So…" he rasped, "…I need…" Sherlock's hands slid up his hips. "…good Christ…a promise from you."

Again Sherlock tried tugging the doctor toward his mouth. Again John resisted, feeling like an amazing superhero for his magnificent self-sacrifice—a deranged, possibly deeply co-dependent, but still, definitely amazing superhero. "A promise, Sherlock, I need—"

The detective thrashed beneath him and growled. He knew what John was going to ask and for exactly one second he debated answering no. After that fleeting second he gave in without struggle and said, "Yes. Yes, I will. As many as you tell me to. Now come _here._ Pleeease." He tugged at John's hips again, mouth already open, waiting, wanting.

A mere mortal once more John whimpered and fell forward on his hands, which placed his hard-on less than one beautiful inch from Sherlock's mouth.

The doctor looked down between them, watched in hormone-hazed fascination as Sherlock's tongue slid from between his lips—almost in a sort of hyper-sexual slow motion, either that or John was having a stroke—and watched the very tip lap at the fluid still dripping from the head of his cock.

And dear god Sherlock's tongue was on fire. Almost literally. As the whole aching length of him slid into his lover's mouth John could feel that Sherlock's low fever had risen several degrees.

That's when a small war began. John tried to stop moving, to pull out of his lover's mouth, but Sherlock, thin-limbed, reedy, definitely-sick-with-the-flu Sherlock tightened every muscle in his body and used his considerable and surprising strength to keep John right where he wanted him. And then he launched a potent battle-winning salvo: He slid a long, absurdly talented finger into John's arse. The doctor conceded defeat with a grunt, a hard thrust, and a string of swear words.

Finally on the same page, the two men moved full steam ahead. John did his part by pumping his hips with abandon, muttering "oh good god good god I'm going to come," and watching his cock plunge into and out of his lover's fevered mouth. For his part Sherlock took in every inch with an arch of his neck, kept up a steady low-pitched moaning at the back of his throat, and used that talented finger to press, rub, and kind of swirl around and against the doctor's extremely grateful prostate.

Who was more relieved when John came in great, hot spurts it would be hard to say, but it quickly became a moot point when several minutes later John snaked down Sherlock's flushed body, took his cock into his mouth, and brought the detective to orgasm in what might have been record time.

It was possibly an hour later that Sherlock kept the promise he'd made (under extreme duress). And of course he complained the whole time.

"I am going to make you pay for this John." Sherlock opened his mouth, let the doctor drop a rather large vitamin into it (which he dry-swallowed because he knew it would give John a fit). "Some time, you won't know when, but some time when I'm about to come _aaaall oooover_ you, when you're so hard for me that it hurts, just then, right then, I'm going to stop what I'm doing John, and I'm going to ask you to, to, I'm going to—"

That's when a fit of coughing did what John, the entire London police force, and most of the rest of the human race could rarely do: It shut up Sherlock Holmes. For a little awhile.

_

* * *

Thank you to coragyps and myszata, both of whom said Sherlock needed to be fed good-for-him things he didn't like…such as vitamins. P.S. to Dead Air Space: I promise, honest to god, that the chocolate-dipped strawberries are on their way. Really._

_By the way, for a slightly different fic, visit atlinmerrick dot livejournal dot com for the first chapter of another Sherlock story…this one without John._


	7. Chapter 7

John Watson hated sick people.

Well no he didn't, he liked them fine, he enjoyed helping them, and fortunately he was good at it. What drove him to distraction were cranky, bossy, whiny, sick people.

To no one's great surprise a flu-riddled Sherlock Holmes was all three. Squared. To infinite.

In Sherlock's dark bedroom the clock clicked over to 4:00 am exactly, and the litany began. "John?…John?…John?—"

In the doctor's dream someone was striking a gong right next to his head over and over.

"—John?…John?…John?—"

Without any segue at all the gong became an alarm clock going off.

"—Jooooooooooohn—"

When the clock turned into crashing cymbals John Watson finally woke but he emphatically _did not change his breathing._ Yes, by now the good doctor knows how to fake sleep through a finely-tuned ruse of measured breathes, random limb twitches, and the occasional snorting snore.

"—John—"

Usually he uses the sleep ploy to sneak a peak at Sherlock doing beautiful Sherlocky things like pacing the bedroom naked (long, sinuous muscles making John think of snakes—but in a good way) or sitting up in bed going over case notes while biting, sucking, and licking his own lips.

"—are you awake?—"

Tonight John engages his subterfuge because, with one glance at the clock, he realizes he's been asleep for exactly two hours and fifty minutes and not only is he so tired he would eat a dead bug if someone told him it had a sleeping pill in it, but he has had it straight up to here with his problem child.

"—John?—"

Yet John couldn't just lay here all night, he knew that. If he didn't answer Sherlock within a certain time frame the three-year-old, excuse him, the thirty-four year old baby would start sort of _cuddling_ him awake.

"—John?…John?…John?"

The man whose name was being so grievously taken in vain grunted as if waking, threw an arm out to the side, and rolled over, ducking his head against Sherlock's side as if still sleepy. Which he was.

"John?" Sherlock was now using what the doctor thought of as his indoor voice, a soft, almost child-like whisper that John is certain he has never, not once, used in anyone else's presence. It is a voice that takes John's heart and grows it two sizes larger.

The good doctor may hate cranky, bossy, whiny sick people but god damn it he's stuck absolutely adoring this one. "Yes Sherlock?"

"John…I'm thirsty."

_I'b dersty,_ were the actual words once they were filtered through Sherlock's clogged nose and sore throat.

The doctor untucked his head from Sherlock's side and woozily peered across his lover's chest. Not twelve inches from the detective's hand a glass of water sat on the bedside table. John propped himself up on an elbow and in the bedroom's shadowy 4:00 am light stared at it pointedly.

Sherlock didn't even follow his gaze, just plucked at his own pajama top and whispered, "It tastes funny." _Id dase funny._

With a sigh John finally looked at Sherlock…who really looked like shit.

John pressed a hand to the younger man's cheek: A fever. Very high. No wonder he couldn't sleep.

John mentally kicked himself. He saw Sherlock trip once, his leg slamming so hard against a street curb that he fractured his shin—something John didn't know at the time because Sherlock got up and continued running for another ten minutes. It wasn't until later that night that the limp, extensive bruising, and ungodly swelling were finally acknowledged and tended to. He's seen Sherlock with food poisoning so bad he's vomiting every five minutes, yet _still_ _texting_ about a case between dry heaves. And don't get him started on the _sounds_ that can come from Sherlock's half-starved stomach when a room is quiet.

John knows the man can and will push himself through pain. So how long has he been laying here, suffering when he damn well doesn't have to?

Right now the good doctor does not feel like one. Stroking Sherlock's hair from his eyes (_he needs a haircut)_ John whispers, "What do you need sweetheart?"

The funny thing about Sherlock is that while he can plow through pain, he can also yield to histrionic suffering with the slightest provocation. The single word 'sweetheart' was all the permission he needed.

Two long arms waved in the air theatrically and he said again, with great petulance, "I'm absolutely _dying_ of thirst."

Without another word John rose, grabbed a robe, and disappeared to the kitchen. When he returned with hot tea, cool juice, plain seltzer, Sherlock was a large lump tucked under the covers, head and all.

Apparently a fevered Sherlock was also one who thought two blankets constituted a brick wall for he yelled far more loudly than necessary, "I feel ghastly John!"

It was true, it really was true: The lump under those blankets was not a man, he honestly _was _a child, one with a glandular problem, but still. "Get out from under and drink this tea Sherlock."

Silence.

John put down the tray. "Okay, how about trying the juice, it'll make you feel better."

Silence.

John moved toward the bed. The one with the quiet lump in it. "I brought seltzer too, but that'll probably irritate your throat."

Silence.

"Sherlock, get out from under or I'll come fetch you."

Silence.

Vague worry.

That last bit was from John, who frowned in the room's night-blue light. "Sherlock?"

Silence.

John slid toward the bed, listened for breathing, wasn't sure if he heard it or not. Finally he touched the blanketed bulge and the silence went away when _everyone_ screamed.

Sherlock because he'd just been jerked out of a fevered, dream-riddled doze, John because Sherlock didn't just wake, he _launched_ from under the covers and out of the bed.

It took five minutes of mutual recrimination and apology before things calmed down.

"There were pink violins, dancing," Sherlock said by way of explanation, sliding back into bed and under the blankets. "It was terrifying."

"Fever dreams," the doctor said softly, picking up the still-warm tea and sitting on the bed's edge. "Now don't slide all the way down yet, you need to drink some of this tea."

Sherlock slid all the way down.

"Sherlock." The word was freighted with patience and sympathy. _Just look at that flushed face, the poor baby,_ John thought.

Poor baby frowned and slid lower.

"Sherlock." The tone was a little tense, but still tender. _A fever would make anyone intractable, a little bit of tea or juice and he'll feel better, poor thing._

Poor thing scowled and tugged both blankets over his head.

"Sherlock." More a barked command than a spoken word, now.

Silence from beneath Fort Sherlock.

Well then. John Watson knew _exactly_ how to handle three-year-olds.

He stood, placed the tea on the tray, picked up the tray, and whispered softly, "Good night love," and headed toward the bedroom door.

Exactly one second elapsed before he heard a small hoarse voice, "Are you leaving?"

"Get some rest," John said without slowing or turning around.

"Don't go."

John stopped short, tea sloshed everywhere. That heart? From before? The one that had grown two sizes larger? That heart was breaking right about now. How could two little words sound so…desolate? _Don't go._ John would bet Sherlock Holmes had thought—though maybe never said—those two simple words a thousand times in his life.

_But that was before me._

John couldn't put the tray down or crawl on the bed fast enough. Leaning against the head of the bed, he gathered his lover to his chest, held him close. "I'll stay right here, I won't leave."

With a contented sigh Sherlock tucked his hands beneath his chin, eyes half closed, and lay still against John. After a few seconds a tongue poked from his mouth and over parched lips.

John caught the movement, then ran a soft hand across Sherlock's forehead and cheeks; they were both very dry. "Wait," the doctor whispered, "don't go to sleep yet."

Of course Sherlock's eyes drifted closed. But it wasn't petulance this time, just tiredness. Another sign of dehydration.

"No, Sherlock, you can't go to sleep. Not until you drink something."

Sherlock said nothing, so John shook him a little roughly. "You're scaring me now, so wake up please."

Fear is hard to fake, and fear is big, it can fill a room, it can shout even at a whisper. Sherlock opened woozy eyes wide and looked up. "I'm awake," he rasped, "it's okay, I'm awake."

John kissed the other man's forehead. "Well good, you fool. The flu isn't a bit of an inconvenience you know. People die from this."

Sherlock shook his head. "I won't die." As if saying it would make it true, as if it were something he could wrap up and give to John as a gift.

John's heart was in danger again, but of breaking or swelling he wasn't sure. "No," he said, "No you won't." Pressing another kiss on his lover's forehead, the doctor shifted, reaching for the tea on the bedside table.

"I'll get it." Sherlock snaked out an arm from the circle of John's, plucked up the cooled tea, brought it to his lips and sipped. "Ghhh!" He rested the cup on this chest. "Oh my throat hurts," he said by way of explanation.

John said nothing, just raised one brow.

"Right," croaked the invalid. He lifted the cup and sipped again, and the man who could _run_ on a fractured shin squeezed his eyes closed against the pain of swallowing. He managed just one more sip, then tilted his head up, saw John looking down. "John?"

John said nothing, just looked, stroked, held.

"Will you…feed it to me?"

The doctor looked into pale eyes, at a flushed face framed by its ever-wild dark halo, and he was pretty sure he would jump into a burning building for this man. Feed him a little tea? Easy peasy.

With a grin the doctor plucked the cup from the detective and began to bring it to those dry lips when long fingers stopped his hand. "No. _Feed it _to me."

Feed it…_Oh._

John thought about that for a moment, then shifted until Sherlock was still sort of cradled against him, but a bit more in his arm, less against this chest.

Then the good doctor took a sip of cold tea, leaned over, and let it run into Sherlock's mouth.

They both sighed. For somewhat different reasons.

A smile ghosted over Sherlock's face, even as he swallowed the cold brew. Encouraged, John took another, larger sip of tea, bent down, trickled the fluid into his lover's open mouth.

Sherlock swallowed again, sighed again. John watched him settle in closer, pull the blankets a little higher, then open his mouth, waiting.

The good doctor pushed out a harsh little breath, took another mouthful of tea, pressed his lips to Sherlock's open ones.

When all the tea was gone, Sherlock didn't even open his eyes, just snaked out his arm once more, plucked up the juice, and held it until he felt John take it from him. Pulling the blankets high again, he lifted his chin and opened his mouth.

His mouth…his mouth…his mouth. John wanted to run his fingers over that mouth, put his fingers in it, see them close, see them suck. He—

_Crap._ The doctor flushed, cleared his throat, shifted a little. Now was _not_ the time to get horny, not the time at all. With a frown he raised the juice to his mouth, took a healthy slug…and filled up Sherlock's pretty pretty mouth with it. At the sound of his lover's soft moan, John moaned right back.

Sherlock opened his eyes, surprised. John averted his, embarrassed.

_"Oh."_ Sherlock realized he must really be sick to have missed John's growing desire. While he himself was not aroused even a little—his moan had been simple relief from thirst—he was, well, touched, that even now John could, would, _did_ find him worth wanting.

Breathing out a fevered sigh, Sherlock whispered, "More?" When the doctor's gaze flicked back to his face, Sherlock nodded, smiled…parted his lips.

And so John filled him up again. And again. And again. And again. And each time Sherlock moaned just a little because he had been so very thirsty, and because now he wasn't.

By the time the tall glass of juice was gone, Sherlock's eyes were half closed again, dreamy and far away. John was sure that in a moment he would sleep.

"Touch…yourself."

Or not.

John didn't move or speak, thinking maybe Sherlock was sinking back into dreams. Then the detective wriggled one of those long arms out from beneath blankets again, plucked the glass from John's hand, let it slide down the side of the bed and to the floor with a soft thunk. Then, blinking a sleepy gaze up at his lover, the detective whispered, "Please?"

John frowned, pulled Sherlock to him tight, kissed his forehead, was gratified to feel a mist of sweat there now. He didn't know what to say, so he said—and did—nothing more.

His patient had other plans. "Rock me to sleep John." Sherlock pushed one of the doctor's hands toward his own body. "…rock me to sleep."

They held each other's gaze for awhile and during that time John thought up a good half dozen reasons to ignore Sherlock's absurd request, the chief one being that it was, you know, absurd. _I'm not going to masturbate right here while you lay in my arms sick and miserable and sweating with fever._

The time ticked by and Sherlock just looked up at him, quiet as a church mouse, and John could see clearly that he was wiped out, weary, that he desperately needed sleep, the sleep that had eluded him all night.

_Rock me to sleep, John._

John shifted, stopped, then shifted again. Finally he moved in slow degrees until he'd opened his robe, licked his palm…and slid his hand over his erection. With a heavy sigh Sherlock finally closed his eyes.

John started slow, moving his hand up the length of his cock, down, and back again, never taking his eyes from his lover's face.

_Those eyes…_even closed they had an unearthly, alien beauty. John imagined their blue-grey gaze on him and he got a little harder.

_Those lashes…_long and black they looked like silk fanning out against pale cheeks. John opened his mouth, stroked a little faster.

_Those cheeks, those cheekbones…_too prominent, yes, but so beautiful in their severity, so gorgeous when they hollowed out as Sherlock sucked him. John bit down on a moan.

_That mouth…_it was an embarrassment of riches that mouth, ridiculously full and pink. John wanted his tongue in it, his cock in it.

"Oh god…"

It was barely a whisper but he held his breath, tensed his body, slowed his hand…but Sherlock did not stir.

They were never quiet when they made love, John realized suddenly; they were noisy lovers, breathy, vocal, talkative. Striving to stay silent, needing to keep quiet was harder than he thought it would be and, it turns out, hotter too.

Biting his lips, his body shaking, John's pumping fist moved faster but he tried, oh he tried so hard to keep a steady rhythm. To rock, rock gently.

Then Sherlock took a deep and shuddering breath and John knew—because the consulting detective isn't the only one who can tell—that his lover was finally asleep.

"God…" John hissed, the pleasure rising up like cold fire, the need filling him with the desire to groan, to bite, to thrust, "Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock," it was barely a whisper, hardly more than breath but hearing his own pleading took John higher, near the edge, and yet no further because he would not break the rhythm, couldn't risk waking—

Sherlock sighed in his sleep, turned and pressed his face against John's chest…and John started coming hard, his entire body shaking with the orgasm, with relief.

Right about then Sherlock slipped into REM sleep…and began having some very, _very _good dreams.

_

* * *

Goodness. Longest chapter yet. What do you think happens next? Perhaps John gets the flu. And maybe Sherlock has to take care of him. Go to Tesco's. Make soup. Feed him. How do you think that's going to turn out?_


	8. Chapter 8

John was pretty sure his teeth were angry.

_Lucozade._

His teeth and his hair, actually. No, no, his teeth, hair, tongue and throat. Wait. His teeth, hair, tongue, throat and also his entire body, as well as his bedroom, and all of planet earth. As a matter of fact everything was out to get him. And everything was an idiot. He hated them all.

_Wine gums._

John Watson groaned, pen and pad in hand, and stared at his bedroom ceiling. He had the flu. The god damned flu. Supine in bed, he was awash in thick secretions and body aches and weird half-hallucinations (angry teeth) and yes he realized that as much as he dislikes cranky sick people, he is, without a doubt, their king.

_Salt and vinegar crisps._

Which probably made Sherlock the damn court—*cough*—jester because he was the one who _gave_ John this grave affliction in the first place. And then had the nerve to get well and swan off after a case that even John thought sounded boring.

_Sliced ham._

Probably went off at a dead run because he didn't want to take care of John. Selfish bastard. When John most needed his help, fighting against his irate teeth and his—*cough*—livid ticklish throat and his incensed hair.

_Pot noodle._

And his joints. They hated him worse than everything else and that was just fine because he hated them back what with all the infernal aching. Also his nose, which seems capable of dripping even when he hung his head upside down off the side of the bed.

_Dairy milk (fruit & nut)._

What he hated most about the flu, and about this one in particular were the hot chills. Yes, the hot chills. For the last two days he'd been shivering _as he sweated_ and, speaking as a doctor, he wasn't even sure—*coughcough*—that was possible.

_Ginger tea._

Not for the first time did he wonder if he had a special new flu. Something that had mutated inside Sherlock—because face it, any disease wanting to mutate in a human host, was certainly going to pick Sherlock to do it in. So maybe he had a more powerful, more showy flu. Like the pride flag daleks.

_Chocolate digestives._

John hung his head off the side of the bed again (his nose still ran, yes, but the blood rushing to his brain made him care a little less). Speaking of which, the most recent crop of daleks irked John no end, if you must know. The colors. It was the bright colors. All lined up beside each other they looked, quite inappropriately, like a flashy little gay pride flag. Which was not particularly synonymous with threatening.

_Heinz tomato soup._

You know what was also not very threatening? Tomato soup. It was really about as non-threatening a food as you could think of. And soothing, especially when you were sick. But not any tomato soup, it had to be Heinz of course. Even the can was cheering. *CoughCoughCough*

_Whiskey._

John rubbed at his throat and peered at the pad, thought about crossing whiskey off the list, then shrugged and underlined it. It was the only item he actually wanted, the rest being for Sherlock. After months of figuring out _how_ to get him to eat, he was now making note of _what_ he would eat with the least fuss. The answer, clearly, was comfort food and junk food.

And that was just lovely. Getting regular meals of any sort into his lover was the goal right now, and if that meant ham-and-chocolate-digestive sandwiches, fine. John would even eat them himself. Frankly they were rather good.

Of course the whole eating regimen was going to go to hell in a handbasket—*coughcoughaaandcough*—now that he was sick. With the oozing fluids, hot chills, and the whole contagion thing happening, he couldn't get to the shops, and he knew that Sherlock wouldn't be capable of actually holding this list in his hands and walking the aisles of an over-bright market for long.

The handful of times he'd shopped on his own Sherlock brought back exactly one of the requested items. Always just one. Not none, not two, never all. Just one. Each time John asked his resident genius what happened to the rest, the detective would blink a few times, shake his head, and wander off in a daze.

John began contemplating further foods to add to the list but was derailed when his flu finally tipped over from just-toying-with-you to full-fucking-blown and _it_ started in earnest and with force: The miserable, dry, hacking cough.

It was like a seizure, violent and aggressive and out of control. Within minutes John's chest ached, he had a pounding headache—and he screamed at the top of his lungs.

Sherlock had suddenly appeared in the bedroom doorway.

They stared at each other for a moment, saying nothing. After the initial shock—which silenced his cough briefly—John just collapsed back on the bed, mouth agape, eyes half closed, hands pressed to his pained chest. "Get my gun please," he croaked, "and shoot me."

Sherlock stayed in the doorway, as if the short distance would keep him safe from re-infection. Then he turned and disappeared.

This was the cough's cue. It returned with a vengeance, laying John low again with spasms so violent he was quite nearly barking. At the end of the fit his arms, head, and neck were hanging off the end of the bed and he'd coughed himself so senseless he passed clean out.

The fever dreams that came were interesting, though not at all restful. There were dragon accountants doing double-entry bookkeeping; commuters stopping their cars on the Tower Bridge to buy lemonade; and Sherlock Holmes sitting in a chair with his violin and coughing his head clean off.

John blinked very fast, several times, then sat up while coughing his head clean off.

Okay, apparently that last one wasn't a dream. Except it was _him_ doing the coughing and yes, yes, there was Sherlock, sitting in an armchair beside the bed, playing his violin softly.

"Sherlock." _Thurlock_ is what he actually said, what with all the wheezing and congestion, "why are you sitting there I don't care oh god I'm dying."

It had taken just under three seconds for John to use up every ounce of energy he had available to fuel body or brain. He fell back on the bed, closed his eyes, and continued wheezing quietly.

A hand gently brushed at his damp forehead, then soft lips pressed against his hair. The good doctor breathed raggedly through an open mouth. "S'nice…"

That hand continued to pet and for three or four minutes John slept. This time it was yellow roses playing a lovely violin concerto, then a big, red-bearded Viking in a tartan wedding dress dancing to violin music—while coughing up a lung.

Every muscle in John's body contracted, waking him violently and sitting him bolt upright in bed, while he pretty much coughed up a lung.

At the end of this fit, John blinked weary eyes in the low light of a bedside lamp. Yes, Sherlock was still in the armchair beside the bed, now completely naked and reading, John squinted—_Advances in Forensic Criminology: Practical and Theoretical Applications, Vol. 2._

The title of the book was so deadly dull that for a moment the cough was rendered powerless and John fell asleep once more. He dreamed of Sherlock, pacing naked on the sidewalk out front of 221B, reading from a giant textbook and—oh for god's sake.

John coughed himself awake _again_ and this time thought he might cry. Then there it was once more, a soft hand brushing at his back, then a weight on the bed tipping him a little so that he found his shoulder leaning wearily against Sherlock's shoulder. The detective stroked his hair. John coughed at him.

"You didn't bring me my gun."

Sherlock said nothing.

John blinked slowly, as if relearning how. "Why don't you have any clothes on?"

The detective wanted to apologize, to take the flu back, let it rack through his body again instead. John had never seemed so…small, fragile, tired. "Dreams."

John nodded as if he understood, then shook his head. "What now?"

Sherlock shifted, until they both sat at the head of the bed, his arms wrapped around John. Whispering at his ear as if it were an important secret, the detective said, "Remember last week, when you…rocked…me to sleep? I had a rather extraordinary dream as a result. I thought I'd experiment, see if I could give you similarly pleasant dreams by providing pleasant stimuli. Did I?"

John's reply was delayed while he tried valiantly to cough up his other lung. Then: "Well they were certainly interesting dreams. Flowery violins and you all bare-bottomed outside."

Sherlock nodded as if that's what he'd expected. "Are you ready for some soup?"

John sighed. "God no. I'm not hungry. Besides, we have no soup."

Sherlock shook his head, "Yes we do."

The doctor briefly tried fighting another coughing spasm, closed his eyes wearily, then muttered, "Mrs. Hudson?"

"No. Me."

John's eyes opened right on up. "What now?"

Sherlock petted John's head and noticed that so long as John was mildly diverted the cough seemed to calm just a little.

"You went shopping and bought soup?"

Sherlock nodded, chin bumping against the top of John's head.

The doctor twisted 'round, looked at his lover. The minor squeeze of his lungs as he did this caused him to cough moistly right in Sherlock's face. It is a mark of his great and abiding love that the detective maintained a neutral expression.

"You. Bought. Soup."

"I _am_ able, you know."

John narrowed his eyes. "Then why don't you do it more often?"

Sherlock smiled. "Because you are more able."

John settled back against his lover's chest and after a few moments of noisy, even breathing fell asleep. This time for eighteen whole minutes.

When he woke, hacking, he was stretched out on the bed as if crucified and a be-robed Sherlock was setting a tray on the bedside table.

"Up," he murmured, crawling barefoot on to the bed.

"Did you bring the gun? Or at least a garrote?"

"I brought soup."

John blinked, revisited his amazement that Sherlock had actually gone shopping, then remembered he was deeply cranky. "I would rather drown in my own mucus than sit up right now thank you."

"Okay. I wasn't hungry anyway."

_Oh. Well played Sherlock Holmes, very well played._ That's what John would be thinking if he could think while coughing his face off.

One he was finished and had picked up the eye that had fallen out of its socket from the sheer violence of the hacking, he said, "Well played you bastard, well played." Then sat up facing Sherlock, said, "Do it. Do it now," and opened his mouth.

Sherlock grinned. Cranky John was…amusing. He sort of liked cranky John. He almost wanted to tease him into—

"If you don't feed me the soup in the next five seconds I am going to wipe snot onto that pretty robe you have on there."

Okay, maybe cranky John wasn't that amusing.

What was amusing, or sweet—sexy isn't the word at all—was the sound of relief John made when Sherlock fed him the first mouthful of soup.

"God I didn't realize how thirsty I am…" murmured the doctor, opening his mouth again. His sweetheart lifted another spoonful toward him, then another and another, unconsciously opening his own mouth each time he fed John.

The good doctor smiled. _You really are far more adorable than anyone realizes._ "No more. You eat the rest."

Sherlock nodded, but turned first and plucked a bottle of strawberry Ribena off the tray and handed it to John. "Drink."

The good doctor looked at the bottle in his hand, jaw unhinged and hanging down somewhere near his sternum. He did not love Ribena. He loved _strawberry_ Ribena. Only strawberry. That Sherlock had absorbed that information—and then kept it on his mental hard drive—why John felt a little misty.

"Drink," said the detective sternly, waiting until he was obeyed before tucking into the germy soup.

After the juice was devoured—between another bout of ferocious coughing—Sherlock offered John tea. His lover narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Did you…_buy_ the tea?"

Sherlock nodded.

John narrowed his still eyes further. "Did you buy…milk _for_ the tea?"

Sherlock narrowed his eyes right back. "Yes, I bought milk for the tea. Now are you going to be insufferable and germy or are you going to drink?"

John was still tingling with amazement, and wondering if he should contract a contagion more often. "Yes please. What else did you buy on this carefree spree of yours?"

Sherlock put the empty bowl on the floor, dragged the tray off the stand and onto the bed between them.

John blinked down at it and his honest-to-god first thought was that he was probably having another one of those freaky little dreams. Because on that heavy-laden tray was _one, two, three_…half a dozen of his most beloved comfort foods.

He poked at the booty while unconsciously wiping his nose on his sleeve. Lemon curd, roast chicken crisps, maltesers, three _three_ kinds of custard creams, a box of PG Tips tea, two more bottles of strawberry Ribena. And a bottle of whiskey.

John was so god damned touched he pretty much wanted to cry. Instead he wheezed and convulsed on another cough.

Several kisses of thanks, three unrestful naps, another Ribena, and forty minutes later, John was on his back, breathing open-mouthed at the ceiling. "How did you even know? Seriously, I don't think I ever expressed a longing for maltesers—on which I think I lived one entire summer when I was sixteen—in your presence ever."

Laying beside him on the bed, Sherlock glanced away from his reading—_Burglary, Extortion, and Counterfeiting: A Brief History of Crime in 21st Century Britain,_ this time—and said, "Molly."

John rasped patiently at the ceiling, then poked Sherlock hard with his _thoughts._ Amazingly it worked. The detective put down his book down and completed the sentence: "She shared a few with you some months ago. You made a rather…sexual sound when you put the first one in your mouth." Sherlock carefully nibbled his lip, murmuring, "I remember that. Very, very clearly."

John did not remember it at all. He took a few moments to cough a few fillings loose, then said, "Really?"

Sherlock nodded dreamily at the ceiling. "Oh yes." He used to think his attraction to John had arrived suddenly by express freight one afternoon, but as time goes on he realizes he was drawn to this man pretty much right from the start.

The detective turned his head to smile sweetly at his sweetheart—only to be sprayed unceremoniously with strawberry-smelling spit as John seized up with more coughing.

The doctor moaned, closed his eyes, fidgeted in exhausted frustration. "Sorry," he sighed miserably, then clenched his teeth around another strangled cough.

_That was it._

Sherlock sat up, tossed his book to the floor and in one easy motion tugged his robe off. That ticklish throat needed something to _do_ to calm it, and it just so happened Sherlock had a good idea on how to manage that. He turned toward his lover, laid down, and gently pulled the doctor toward him until John's head was pillowed on his arm. "Suck."

John blinked blearily at the dark nipple in his face. Then without a second thought he wriggled close, opened his mouth, and began to eagerly…nurse.

Sherlock watched his lover closely and carefully for a minute, then realized he was clenching his teeth, biting off a moan before it could be heard. What could be heard was John—nearly forty, now going on two—sighing softly, contentedly, both hands curled loosely between their bodies.

Sherlock petted that sandy head and thought _very hard_ about the basis weight of paper required for a single counterfeit one pound noooote—there was that guttural little sigh again.

Sherlock cleared his throat, patted John's shoulder encouragingly and _told himself firmly_ that of course to calculate the basis weight you'd first need to know the mass of the basis ream, the number of sheets in the ream aaaand—John had suddenly started nursing harder and faster.

The detective hissed out a short, sharp breath and turned his mind to printer steganography as it related to current counterfeit-reduction measures in both Britain and abroad and—oh dear god John's teeth, John's teeth, John's teeth were scraping over the hard, tight bud of his nipple, making Sherlock's toes curl.

_Think of something else, think of something else._

"So," breathed Sherlock to himself, "to prevent the reproduction of banknotes using today's ever more sophisticated photocopiers, the EURion constellation—a portmanteau of EUR and constell—oh my god fuck me now."

John was fast asleep, still sucking…and now nuzzling for Sherlock's other nipple. Just like—Sherlock groaned, turned a little so John could latch on to the nipple closer to the bed—an actual baby who is, you know, actually feeding.

For the quietly panting detective it was time to face a fact. Yes, his nipples are absurdly sensitive and it's always been easy for John to get him hard when he plays with them, but the…the…the infantile _suckling_ is oh my good god—John's fevered tongue pressed up under the nipple—is somehow making this so much more arousing, the feelings so much more inten—Sherlock's free hand shot up into his own hair, grabbing a handful, when John's teeth grazed softly again.

Finally Sherlock gave up trying to distract himself from what was happening. And what was so very, very happening was this: He was getting wildly, heart-poundingly, cock-hardeningly turned on by John's needy, greedy, sleepy infant-like nursing and well wasn't that just a kinky little surprise?

With a shaky sigh Sherlock carefully tightened his arm, holding John a touch more firmly to his oh-my-god-unbelievably-sensitive breast (Breast? Can you say that for a man? You can, right?), then angled his hips away just enough so that his free hand could slide down and between his legs.

Sherlock screwed his eyes shut and pressed his forehead to the top of John's head. "Oh god," he sighed softly, massaging his sac slowly and just a little bit hard. At the low rumble of his lover's voice John stuttered a sigh, frowned in his sleep, and bit sharply at the nipple in his mouth—Sherlock's hand involuntarily clenched around his balls—before starting to suck again.

The detective stilled a moment so that his head would stop spinning, then slid a careful hand up and onto his cock. Even he was surprised by the amount of pre-come that slicked over his hand. Breathing through his mouth—which took breaks now and again to kiss the top of John's head—Sherlock started stroking himself slowly, fist loose and teasing against aching flesh.

John pressed his face against his lover's chest and, as if they'd done this every one of their nights together, Sherlock knew that he wanted the other nipple again. With a little twist of his hips in one direction, his torso in the other, Sherlock placed the other nipple near John's mouth, brushed his lips with it, then held his breath waiting for him to latch on.

At first he didn't and Sherlock almost keened, but, after a sharp intake of breath, John's tongue darted out to brush at the hard nub, then his lips clamped around it and, more gently and slowly than before, he started sucking again.

Okay, no more time for teasing.

Keenly aware now that at any time this sweet little joy ride might end Sherlock took hold of his straining cock and started pumping away, all the while watching. Watching John.

He's a man, so clearly a grown man, his face a little more worn and weary than it should be, but all the more beautiful for that.

_Sherlock rubbed his palm over the head of his erection._

And yet here he was, nursing gently softly contentedly, pale pink lips pursed voluptuously.

_Sherlock gathered the pre-come (good god he was certainly oozing away down there) onto his hand._

And for all the world as he suckled it was if John was truly being fed, nourished, filled.

_Sherlock imagined filling that gorgeous mouth with himself, saw the many times John has gone to his knees in front of him, or let Sherlock crawl up his body, straddle his face and hump away._

Now and again as he pulled and nipped at the tiny bud in his mouth John groaned a little greedily.

_The sound of _that_ shoots from ear directly to dripping cock, causing Sherlock to briefly lose the rhythm of his thrusts._

And then his cheeks hollowed out a little when he sucked hard for a moment or two.

_Sherlock felt the orgasm coming and his body wanted to narrow focus, close his eyes for him, stop up his ears, but he wouldn't look away, wouldn't stop listening._

Then, as if in his dreams he was in this same place with Sherlock, John started tossing his head a little, moaning around the nipple, pulling, biting, worrying that bit of flesh and—

—_and that was it that was all, Sherlock tilted his hips away, parted his legs, and with a long and breathy moan the orgasm hit him hard, come spurting out of him, warm as milk._

It took awhile to come back to earth, to one-handedly clean himself up as best he could, then to draw the covers over them both. When they were finally tucked in, still cuddling, John's lips moving less frantically now, Sherlock realized that while he has been nursing, John hasn't coughed even once.

Well then.

With a small, smug smile, Sherlock sighs and follows his lover into dreams.


	9. Chapter 9

Idiotic experiments. Fruitless, long-shot, senseless, _idiotic_ experiments.

Slumped like a pretty, boneless rag doll at the kitchen table, the consulting detective—who was neither successfully consulting nor detecting at this particular moment—stared out the kitchen window, watching a grey dawn seep into the room.

God he was tired. And his back ached. He hadn't moved for most of an hour. He knew he should sit up straight. He didn't.

He'd pulled another all-nighter. Third straight one this week. And as pointless as the rest. _Pee oh eye enn tee_—Sherlock swung his leg up onto the table—_el ee ess ess_—shoved a brace of inoculated petri dishes with his socked foot—_pointless—_until a few satisfied his petulance and fell (apparently unbreakable) to the floor.

Soft noises overhead tugged his gaze ceiling-ward briefly. John was up early.

Sherlock grunted. Dragged his leg off the table as if it weighed a hundred pounds. He tipped forward. Dropped his chin to the table with a boney thunk. Stared. More than two dozen petri dishes glistened back at him, every last one with their agar growth medium resolutely unmarred.

A distant metallic squeak. The shower faucet.

Sherlock stabbed a finger into the nearest god damn dish. No black salmonella in this one. _Stab._ No red serratia marcescens bacteria in that one. _Stab._ No white-ringed grain fungi here._ Stab._ And definitely no chromobacterium violaceum in these three. _Stab. Stab. Stab._ No nasty, fuzzy, moldy, elegant solutions to a fifteen year old cold case.

Idiotic experiments. He'd known from the start they wouldn't work. Of course not. It had been boredom talking him into researching this foolish case. And boredom said such boring things. _Do something! Anything. Except shoot the walls. Because this time Mrs. Hudson means it or she wouldn't have had that barrister come by with those preliminary eviction papers. Oh, I know! How about spend three days doing useless experiments with old dirt plucked from the case morgue at the Yard?_

Another squeak. The shower turning off. (By the way, Sherlock is pretty sure the barrister had been an actor friend of Mrs. Hudson's. But only _pretty sure.)_

Instead of wasting three perfectly good days, what Sherlock really should have done is finally have that psychotic break all his nemesises (nemisi? nemini?) were predicting. Just gone mental, and rampaged across London on an ingenious spree of gory mayhem. Afterward he could delete it from his hard drive, then hire himself to solve the crime.

Sherlock's chin lifted. It was quiet in the flat again. By now John was probably shaving. Shaving away the scratchy (sexy) blond stubble that magically appeared overnight. The consulting detective rubbed at his own jaw. Not much there. It always took him most of forever to grow a beard.

He'd be wrapped in a towel and bare-chested while he shaved. As usual. John that is. Yes. Bare-chested.

Sherlock's index finger swirled slowly over the slick agar in the petri dish closest to him.

Anyway. He's done now. This case could double-damn well stay cold for all Sherlock cared. He'd just have to alleviate his boredom some other way. Unearth John's gun again, probably. Find something new to shoot at. Mrs. Hudson wouldn't evict them. She loved them too much. And he'd heard her on the phone with her friends. Let's just say she wasn't exactly annoyed by the earful she got now and again.

Sherlock's finger pressed against the thick, gleaming agar in the petri dish. The gel resisted the pressure at first…and then yielded to his finger's penetration, wrapping tightly around him as he slid in.

_Ahem._

In the dim morning light Sherlock blinked slowly. Experiments and target practice weren't the only ways to pass the time. No, no they weren't.

The now-less-bored consulting detective sat up. In slow degrees the slump disappeared from his spine. He forgot about petri dishes—well, after he withdrew his finger—slowly—from the one he was still sort of poking—and with the keenness of a man who is by degrees becoming quite randy, he realized he could just about hear the scrape of John's razor, see his pale chest.

And the dog tags he'd been wearing lately at Sherlock's request.

_The dog tags._

Sherlock stood, forgetting the pains that had gathered in his long body. He listened intently as he ghosted silently through the flat's early morning light. In just a few moments he was there, at the door of the loo, earlier deductions divinely correct on all counts.

At first John didn't see him standing still as shadow in the shadows, and then he did, of course he did. After all it's not quite every day a tall man makes himself small for you, going to his knees at the door of the damn _toilet _because he wants you. Sleepy, cranky, a little punch-drunk, and a lot in love, he most definitely wants you.

Without acknowledging his lover John slowly wiped the last of the shaving cream from his chin. Then a little more slowly still while he let his body finish waking. Finally he took a deep breath, closed his eyes a moment and let himself...get ready.

Patiently, very patiently, as patiently as a man who can spend more than seventy hours murmuring to and lovingly tending shallow dishes full of blue, brown, and red algae gel, Sherlock waited.

At last John turned to look at his lover. The corners of his mouth crooked up, a whisper of a smile. _I've missed you in our bed, beautiful. I've missed you._

He walked over to his sweetheart, looked down at him. Shadows nibbled at the planes on that pale face, throwing cheek and browbones into deep, stark relief. John tilted his head. Mmm. Bit not good, the hollow depth of those shadows. Would have to do something about them. In a moment. First he'd have to…motivate Sherlock.

John lifted his arms, placed his hands either side of the door frame. His dog tags brushed together, metal-on-metal, a sharp little siren song that lifted Sherlock's chin, opened his mouth.

John whispered something to himself, took a little time to stare at the willing vision before him. Then, in slow, slower, slowest degrees he leaned down, until Sherlock's tongue touched the tags, until, moaning, he closed his mouth around them.

And he sucked. Of course he did. _Oh god of course he did._

For a lot longer than he intended, John let him. But not long enough. Not nearly long enough.

John straightened slowly, watched the tags slip between Sherlock's lips. It seemed to take precisely forever for the tags to slide out of that mouth…and then they were caught, Sherlock's teeth clamping down hard.

They stayed still then, both of them, breathing a little hard, holding one another's eye. Then John tsk-tsked and grasped his lover's chin, tugged a little, a simple message.

Sherlock growled, a simple reply.

John put his fist around the chain, held it tight and leaned down toward Sherlock who, of course, instinctually opened his mouth for a kiss.

He got that kiss. John plays fair. But he didn't get the dog tags back.

Sherlock growled again, wordless, demanding, ready.

John stepped near, until his lover's arms wrapped around his waist and pulled them together hard and close.

With a soft sigh Sherlock pressed his lips to John's bare belly, kissing it quite as passionately as he had John's mouth—possibly more so. If that were technically possible. Which it was. Clearly.

It's hard not to feel you're in the superior position when your lover is on his knees in front of you, but you'll find it's extremely difficult to maintain that sense of advantage when your legs go wobbly, you close your eyes, and you silently start rooting for a tongue to poke at your belly button.

_Aaaaaand there it was._

John sighed as Sherlock's tongue tip went round and round the edges, then tried to push John's notoriously out outtie _in._

And then did it again, and again, and—oh good god Sherlock was sort of fucking John's belly button with his tongue. If that was technically possible. Which it was. Clearly.

_I will not sink to my knees on the loo floor—_and really, what was with the two of them and the loo floor?—_and spread my legs and, and…wait, why?_

Oh. Yes. Food. As in no sex before. As in…that tongue…pressing…it was still…it was thrusting…and it was…woah! Biting, there was biting, Sherlock's teeth nibbling at the skin of John's stomach, then at the tiny bit of belly button flesh he could get at and—

—there went John's left knee, turning traitor, trying to tumble him down. Fortunately Sherlock's arms instinctually tightened, holding him so he didn't fall. Of course the consulting genius realized the error of his ways a second later and tried to take them both down _(let him take you down John, let him go down John, let—)_—

John had a brisk, silent conversation with himself, engaged both knees in the upright and locked position, and wiggled out of Sherlock's grasp.

And tried to wiggle out of Sherlock's grasp.

_And really tried wriggling pretty damn firmly out of—_

It seemed now that John was on his back and Sherlock was on his front, mouth pressed at his belly again, biting a bit, sucking a lot, poking and licking. Until today John had not quite known his belly was this extravagantly responsive or that a tongue _jabbing_ (that's what it was doing right now, all aggressive and needy) at his belly button would actually be thrusting, by some magic, right between his legs.

Legs which John couldn't spread because Sherlock's were clamped around his, but that was okay, just fine, because Sherlock's right hand was under his towel and clamped around his cock, and his left was reaching up, grabbing hold of the ball chain on which the dog tags hung and—_god damn it John needed to stop this and also god damn it god damn it god damn it who needs to be this fucking noble?_

John hadn't even opened his mouth yet, but Sherlock detected the sea change immediately and clenched everything more tightly, legs, hands, even teeth—and waited for the storm.

Which came first as words, "Sherlock stop—" and then as John trying to sit up.

By increments Sherlock Holmes was becoming a good man. Live with John Watson and you're sort of damned to experience growth and improvement, it's almost in the user manual ("Your John H. Watson comes with an excellent disposition and will, by mere proximity, improve your manners, mind-set, sex life, and also possibly clear up your skin."). But the growth and improvement of Sherlocks takes awhile and sometimes that change derails completely and a Sherlock returns to his old, extremely self-focused state.

As you might have guessed, now was one of those times.

With another growl and the employing of a magical ability to somehow double his own weight Sherlock completely ignored John's attempts to abort Mission Sex on the Loo Floor (Again).

Instead he redoubled his efforts at that belly, at that belly button (why had he not done this before? How could he have spent more than five minutes as this man's lover and not absolutely gorged himself on this belly and its very own endlessly tender button?).

It didn't matter. He had discovered it now and he would not be denied. Tightening his grip on the dog tag chain as if this would keep John in place, Sherlock dragged his bottom teeth along John's skin and was rewarded with a flush of goosebumps from John's nipples to belly. Which only encouraged him to do it again, and again, and—ah, there were John's fingers, sliding slow and soft into his hair.

Sherlock grinned and—woah, there was now pulling. Sort of harder than necessary, no definitely harder than necessary, as in—

"Ouch!" Sherlock raised his head, scowled. John raised his and scowled back.

Neither said anything because they both knew exactly what the other would say. Fortunately for John, Sherlock's beleaguered stomach broke the stalemate and growled. Loudly.

Sherlock knows many, _many_ things. The force needed to shatter a human femur. How long it takes a loosely rolled cigarette to burn to ash. What the Thames will do to a dead body left in its waters for twenty-four hours. He also knows that by sheer bravado and attitude he can get almost anything from almost anyone. And finally he knows that within the walls of 221B all of that means nothing. Bupkiss. Nada. if John Watson says no, nearly nothing Sherlock says, nothing Sherlock does will change that to a yes.

That is, until certain _absurdly logical_ conditions are met.

"Fine."

He meant to say it petulantly—and no one in 221B, hell no one on Baker Street, does petulant as well as Sherlock—but it didn't come out that way. Possibly because he was still under the influence of the belly button, the detective's usual irked rumble was instead syrup soft, even tender.

He tried again. "Fine, John." Nope. Still treacley. Compliant even.

Sherlock's stomach rumbled again, at volume.

Okay, fine. _Fine._ Might as well get this over with then. "How do you want me?"

John tugged his towel over his waning erection, sat up, which forced Sherlock to do the same. The good doctor held the detectives eye, answered: "In the kitchen. At the table. Mouth open." And grinned.

Oh. Well. This might not be so bad at all.

..

Breakfast is boring.

It's all about eggs and toast and tea and oh god it's boring beyond belief. Breakfast, however, becomes noticeably less boring when:

* It is fed to you by your lover.

* Using his scrupulously scrubbed hands.

* With the promise of…something else if you're a good boy. A very good boy. "Stop calling me a good boy John." Significant eyebrow raise. "Okay. Yes. I'll be good."

And Sherlock was. Very good. Willing. Compliant. (There's that word again.) While John dressed in a t-shirt and old fatigues (they went with the dog tags and carried the theme, okay?), scrambled eggs, buttered toast, and made tea, Sherlock not only quietly cleared the kitchen table of all but one petri dish (it was his great hope that the table would be needed for…other things) he had also been sitting at the table without complaint for five entire minutes. Perhaps a record.

While he waited that five minutes he entertained his brain—_why hadn't even one inoculated petri dish produced a result?—_as well as his body—_thrust finger slowly into the yielding agar, remove finger little bit by oh-so-very little bit. Lather, rinse, repeat._

He was so successful in his diversion that he was almost surprised when John was there, sitting beside him, toast already in hand and lifted toward his mouth.

As has become reflex by now, Sherlock opened, bit, chewed, swallowed—the expected gamut of consumption. As he did these things John said, "Tell me what these have been about," gesturing to the petri dishes on the countertop.

It was hit-and-miss with John. Sometimes he was curious about Sherlock's experiments, sometimes he didn't "give a flying fuck" (John's words; honest). Sherlock suspected he didn't care just now, either, so he gave him the condensed version between bites.

"Cold case from the Yard." John scooped scrambled eggs onto a piece of toast, popped both into Sherlock's mouth. "It was interesting because they had so much physical evidence." Tea (yes, John lifts the cup to Sherlock's mouth; that's how this works, and it _does_ work so just leave it be). "The kind that go well with my experimental method." More egg-freighted toast. "Plant spores, soil, dirty fingernail clippings, feces—"

"Moving on?"

Sherlock would have replied with something petulant (there's that word again), except there was more toast, tea, egg. Around these he mumbled, "But three days. No results. Didn't really expect any. Hoped."

John nodded, unconsciously opened his own mouth with each successive bite he fed his lover. At this point Sherlock would have said something endearing (he _does_ know how), but there was the final bite of eggs, this time slid into his mouth by John's fingers, Sherlock's absolute preferred way of being fed (a preference that would soon change, but that's another story for another time).

When John was rather leisurely about withdrawing those fingers, it didn't take a consulting genius to realize the tenor of the breakfast had now changed. As such the detective blinked pretty grey eyes at his lover and he _sucked._

John let him. After awhile the good doctor withdrew his fingers and murmured softly, "You do catch on quickly."

Sherlock dropped his voice a register, "So some say." After a moment another low rumble, "I believe I was promised a reward for being a 'good boy'?"

The good doctor smiled, stood, then sat back down on the table in front of Sherlock. At this juncture apricot jam made a late but stunning debut at breakfast. Sherlock's mouth opened before the lid had even come off the jar or John's toes had so much as wiggled under his lover's thighs.

Sex is sometimes predictable. It just is. Still great, sure, but predictable. Some few things, however, rarely grow old. How Sherlock looked when he opened his mouth and waited for John to fill it—with fingers, tongue, cock—well that flushed the doctor's body hot pretty much every damn time.

So John looked at Sherlock's waiting mouth, blushed nicely, realized he'd forgotten a spoon, realized he was a genius for forgetting a spoon, took off his t-shirt, then blinked his gaze up to Sherlock's and wrapped his fingers around the dog tags.

Sherlock's tongue tip made its own late appearance at the breakfast, licking kind of slowly at Sherlock's upper lip. General applause, in the form of John's increased respiration, followed.

Act two commenced when the good doctor dipped the dog tags into the jam, withdrew them, and slid both between his lover's lips. Sherlock closed his mouth around them and sucked. And moaned.

Did we say sex can be predictable? Yes, well sure, true _but—_the other thing that John will never get tired of is his lover's _noises,_ their sheer variety, verve, and volume. As a matter of fact John has still not erased a message left on his mobile over six months ago that consists of nothing more than Sherlock moaning for ten seconds that seem to instead go on for ten minutes.

Anyway, back to a scene already in progress. After relishing the sounds, the sights, the vigorous sucking, John leaned back, which tugged at the tags, which inspired Sherlock to hold just tight enough between teeth that they kind of _dragged_ out of his mouth. Eventually the tags slid free and fell to the doctor's bare chest with a soft click.

Time for John's tongue to make an appearance across lips. Then time for the doctor's fingers to dip in the jam and rub slowly over the tags to the appreciative tune of Sherlock's "Oooh."

John had barely finished before his lover caught those fingers in his mouth, where he lapped at them, probed between them with a long and agile tongue, and just generally took a long, slow while to make absolutely sure there wasn't one sweet whisper of apricot left.

Mmmm. Time for those dog tags next, by way of teeth grazing gently over first one nipple, then the other. Then soft-hard biting dead center, catching a bit of skin and a lot of metal.

Sherlock started low. Small moans. Little noises. Just a touch of desperation to season things. Then he slid his hands around John's waist and pulled himself to the edge of his chair. Groaning, he pushed the doctor back until he was leaning on his hands, slicking his tongue down John's body until he was at that god damn precious belly button again.

Which he proceeded to tongue avidly, breathlessly, until John squirmed, moaned, and spread his legs.

_Okay, that was it._

Sherlock's hands flew to the waist of John's fatigues. John leaned further back on his hands, lifted his hips, then each foot in turn and like magic he was bare in both directions. Unless you consider a hard-on well-dressed, in which case the good doctor was attired very fashionably.

At this point it goes without saying that Sherlock naturally thought John's cock would look even better slathered with jam. Yes, it really does go without saying.

What should be said, however, is that jam makes a surprisingly decent lubricant for a fist-fuck, which Sherlock now started giving his lover. Oh, yes, did we mention the part about _slowly?_

John tilted his head back, softly groaned his encouragement, and with feet planted firmly on Sherlock's chair, started thrusting his hips up to meet each of his lover's strokes. And it was very good. So good that they continued in this fashion for several minutes, the detective making use of his hibernating skills to deduce when John was near orgasm and then to slow his fist down, then deduce when John needed more pressure when he would then tighten his fist and stroke faster. Finally Sherlock got the feedback he was waiting for—"GodShr'lockpleaseplease,"—and he cupped John's balls and squeezed.

Another groan from the doctor, more pressure from the detective, and Sherlock bowed his head and wrapped his mouth around his lover as he started coming with a guttural sigh.

And, as with his lover's fingers before, Sherlock devotedly remained where he was until once again his very talented tongue had lapped John quite clean. So very, very pleasant did the detective find this task that from here on he would be of the opinion that jam and John's come were really rather made for one another. But then again, Sherlock does not exactly view things like other people.

Case in point: A few minutes later he tried to lube his own hard-on with jam and coax John down on to it.

The doctor was a little boneless and muddle-headed still, but not completely daft. "I'm sorry, we're not lubing you up with jam Sherlock." John frowned. "I don't even want to think about the health and sanitation issues of that, so don't argue."

In the end they settled for what was closest to hand and still on the counter: Butter. Yes, it was probably just as unsanitary if you think about it, but at this point everyone just wanted to move on to, you know, the penetration part of the program.

And move they did.

John, straddling his lover's lap, rose just a little with each of Sherlock's withdrawals, then met each of the taller man's hard upward thrusts with a downward rock of the hips.

The buttery slickness of Sherlock's cock, it can safely be said, was greatly appreciated by all. So appreciated that eventually John just clamped his hands around Sherlock's shoulders, and rode for all he was worth.

The sensations, appropriately, were delicious, yet every time Sherlock got near to coming his grip on John's waist tightened and he slowed his lover down, down, down. Then he would slide his hands to John's thighs and the doctor would start rocking faster again, then faster still, until Sherlock's cock was pushing into him so hard and so _right_ that John would start panting, then keening a little, then—Sherlock's hands would lock vice-like around his waist and they would start all over again.

But you know what? There is only so much pleasure a man can be expected to take and John had just about reached his absolute limit. So he did the most logical thing in the world. The next time Sherlock's hands settled to his thighs, John plucked the dog tags up, slid them into his own mouth, then kissed Sherlock. As the good doctor proceeded to ride hard, harder, harder still he thrust those tags in his lover's mouth with a fierce and needy moan.

Sherlock didn't even see the orgasm coming until it was on him—like John—fierce, hard, and fast.

Finally, much to John's delight, it turned out that Sherlock had a ridiculously huge craving for apricot jam and toast for the rest of the week.


	10. Chapter 10

"It's my turn, John. Open a little…wider."

Sherlock's mouth was right against John's ear, his voice pitched _exactly so._ Even in a mood, a pique, a righteous vexation John's body would jump ship and react with aching hardness to that throaty rumble.

The good doctor was not in an ill humor tonight, however, he was in a suit and tie, his hair trimmed, his face most definitely _not_ shaved since day before yesterday, at his lover's request.

Sherlock was equally dashing sitting beside his beau, lean as a snake in a black tuxedo, hair brushed smooth, both wrists and three long fingers tricked out in silver jewelry, at his lover's request.

"No, don't open your eyes, that's cheating."

They were on the rooftop of 221B. It was their first anniversary. They were celebrating with food, and it was John's turn to be fed.

John would congratulate himself for this later, his most magnificent idea for feeding Sherlock. Because of course celebrating their anniversary (dating from the night they first made love) by feeding each other had been John's idea. Anything at 221B relating to food was John's idea.

Erase and correct: Anything at 221B relating to _eating_ food was John's idea. Sherlock had profound respect for foodstuffs as sustenance for maggots, every kind of larva, beetles, and bacteria, but usually not as actual, you know, human nourishment.

Of course Sherlock had liked John's plan, as the good doctor had made sure it involved the rudiments of deduction. Like so: Each man would feed the other something (or a combination of somethings) from the plethora of foods they'd brought up. It was up to the man being fed to work out what the food was. And good god, they had a lot to work with.

That's because John had basically lost his mind and all of a paycheck shopping for this event and had purchased everything remotely sexy, moderately edible, edibly sexy or just plain good. Including but not limited to strawberries, figs, oysters, chilled shrimp, fresh pineapple, chocolate-covered bananas, Pop Rocks (don't ask), canned cheese (seriously, do. not. ask.), cold spiced noodles, peaches, whipped cream, sushi, durian (don't try this at home), smoked salmon, toffee, slivered almonds, cherries, custard, popcorn, truffles, coconut, trifle, pecans, grapes, wine gums, four kinds of biscuit, eight types of jam, and honestly that wasn't even half of it.

Anyway, back to a scene already in progress: It was Sherlock's turn to feed John and the detective was not playing fair. Not only was he taking his sweet time getting food into his lover's mouth, but while he made the good doctor wait—and here's the part with the cheating—he breathed soundlessly against John's cheek, the scent of it as sweet as the caramel his lover had just fed him.

Finally something ghosted lightly against John's lips and then against his tongue and as he closed his mouth around it he knew immediately what it was: Chocolate mousse, fed to him on the tips of Sherlock's fingers.

Well, then. John knows how to cheat, too.

Instead of licking the mousse off, the doctor slid his mouth down along his lover's fingers, tongue pushing slowly between them. It took the good doctor nearly a minute to suck those long fingers clean. With eyes closed he didn't see the face of his lover, so he couldn't see Sherlock's mouth open, tongue trapped between his own teeth. The doctor could hear just fine though, and what he heard was nothing. Sherlock was so transfixed he wasn't breathing.

Good.

Finally John opened his eyes and lifted his chin, his lover's slick fingers dragging out of his mouth and down over his lower lip. Sherlock made the softest little grunt as they separated. Then, taking a deep breath, he leaned close, tried to claim John's mouth.

With a grin, the doctor turned away a little. "Wait," he whispered, then pressed his mouth to the detective's ear. "You're good at that," he breathed. "At waiting. At holding back."

Well, yes. Sherlock was indeed good at waiting, when the waiting was designed to tantalize _John,_ to tease his body, which frankly, if you must know, looked extremely tasty in a midnight blue suit with that scruffy beard and—

Sherlock tried kissing his lover again and was again rebuffed. "Your turn," John said so softly Sherlock somehow got goosebumps from _not quite hearing the words._

Yes, John Watson was good at this. Very, very good.

"My turn," the detective murmured, voice a little high, a little breathy. John wondered if anyone else had ever seen Sherlock this way: So…elemental. John didn't think so. Greedy and selfish man that he is, he didn't _want _to think so.

"Your turn," John echoed, holding Sherlock's gaze until finally the good detective closed his eyes, chin dipping until it rested on his chest.

John took his time, too. For a few long moments all he did was gaze at Sherlock, a beautiful fallen angel who looked as if he prayed.

The doctor grinned. With any luck the thoughts going through that dark head were more depraved than virtuous. And if not, well…

John plucked the next item from the table and stood, letting his still-sitting lover feel his movement with a soft hand trailing up his chest. Instinctively Sherlock tipped his head back—good god that neck—and opened his mouth. For a moment John wanted nothing more than to slide his fingers into that mouth and feel Sherlock suck, but instead the good doctor squeezed a dripping, succulent slice of plum, dipped in honey, until juice and honey drizzled into Sherlock's mouth.

The detective hummed happily in recognition—honey, of course he loves honey—tongue snaking up to catch drops as they fell. And fall they did, John reaching down repeatedly to swirl another slice of fruit in the amber liquid, then let that too drip thick and warm and sweet into Sherlock's mouth.

By the time they had worked through four slices, Sherlock had his arms wrapped tight around his lover and John, quite unawares, was slowly thrusting his hips against Sherlock's belly.

Things were quite close to going from great to fucking fantastic about then but fortunately (?) they ran out of plum and John came to his senses. He thrust his hips once more (twice) (okay three times), then leaned down and whispered against Sherlock's open mouth, "And so?"

Eyes still closed Sherlock slid his hands down to cup John's suite-clad arse. Tugging, grinding John's hard-on against his stomach, Sherlock whispered, "Honey and plum and…" he licked at his lover's mouth, opened his eyes, "…John, my John."

The good doctor knows he's too old to go weak-kneed, but tell that to his knees. For a moment he couldn't remember what he was supposed to do, then when he did he sort of sat down with a thump and a shuddery breath and took a moment to gather his wits. When Sherlock grabbed the legs of the chair on which he was _right now sitting_ and _dragged_ it toward his own, pulling them close together, John's wits scattered again. Because, honestly, seriously? Sometimes all you can say to a delicious show of strength is oh-my-yes.

"Close your eyes," Sherlock purred.

John said nothing. He _thought _oh-my-yes, and closed his eyes.

Silence a long while, then soft noises, then silence once more and this time it lingered.

When he finally felt the banana press against his lips—just the size difference between Sherlock's fingers of before and the fruit was quite enough to be going on with thank you—John groaned in the back of his throat, slipped from his chair and to his knees, lips sliding up along the banana and oh my good god _why_ did that look so damned sexy that Sherlock could feel his cock moving as if alien life had suddenly landed inside his trousers?

Hands settling on Sherlock's knees, John's mouth slid back _down_ that banana and objectively this all should have looked absurd but the alien in Sherlock's pants said it looked fucking magnificent and so just as the good detective shifted, leaning forward to claim his lover's mouth, John _bit_ that banana's tip clean off, murmured, "Chocolate-covered banana," and got back in his chair.

When John opened his eyes he actually giggled (for two grown men they are plenty fond of the giggling) at the sight of Sherlock tipped a bit forward, eyes and mouth wide open, looking a little fluster-stunned.

After a moment of combobulation the taller man frowned briefly at the shorter man, wondering when, just when, in the last year, John had turned the tables on him and become the one who could tease like this, the one who was _evil_ and _genius_ and so damned, damned sexy?

Well it didn't matter, did it? No, it did. not. matter.

With a shaky sigh Sherlock closed his eyes. Left his mouth wide open, and waited.

For awhile the detective detected only soft motions, the brush of a cuff along the tabletop, a fingernail against a plate, maybe an exhaled breath, and his mouth drifted wider. He waited for a fork, for fingers, for food…and he waited some more and still waited and finally he probed the air with his tongue as if it would amplify the sounds he was no longer hearing and—

—there it was, an unquantifiable sound and John's open mouth was pressing at his open mouth and the consulting detective started to sort of smile, to shove his tongue forward and into his lover when he felt instead…something-not-John push into him.

Instinctively Sherlock opened wider still and only once it was past his lips did Sherlock realize that John had fed him the next item—from his mouth.

Nerve endings from the top of Sherlock's head to the soles of his feet sort of damn well _sparkled _right then, slammed with a hot, horny gush of oh-fuck-yeah endorphins. Good god Sherlock used to think that the best way on earth to be fed was with John's fingers. No. Oh no no so very much no. _This._ This was the way Sherlock wanted to be fed for the rest of his life. Forever. Period. Thank you.

It was a whole five seconds since the—Sherlock's tongue slicked around the slick thing in his mouth—avocado had been pushed into him (pushed into him by John's tongue; let's say it as basically and raw as possible because it sounds _so much better that way),_ and the deducing machine, the super-genius? He was only just now gathering wits enough to groan gently, almost delicately, in good and clear appreciation of the moment.

So help him, even with his eyes closed, Sherlock knew John smiled.

Something else Sherlock knew was that if he asked for more—fed to him in exactly that way—he would be denied. A year ago, when they first got together, John would not have refused him. He wouldn't have been capable of it, Sherlock's pretty sure. But now? Now Sherlock knew what the hell BAMF meant, and it was damn well personified in one John H. Watson in every way it's possible to personify something, including sexually teasing the holy living hell out of your know-it-all-lover with great and furious frequency.

So Sherlock didn't beg as he was _this_ close to doing. Instead he consumed that morsel of avocado, named it such, opened his eyes—noting the grin he'd deduced seconds ago—and said with great appreciation, _"That._ Forever. Please."

Then, with a deep breath he lifted an only-little-bit-trembly hand and ran his fingertips softly over John's eyelids, closing them. "Your turn, your turn, your turn," he murmured, possibly a little drunk from the absolutely giddy love he had for the utterly beautiful concept of John feeding him forever _for-damned-ever_ with his mouth.

No time for daydreams of that now, though, no. Now it was time to feed John.

Later on Sherlock would admit that he sort of rushed things. That in his desire to be fed again himself he went a little crazy with what he fed his lover. And what he fed him was a four-year-old's grand and messy fantasy: a drippy, oozy, sweet mound of chocolate biscuit dipped in strawberry jam, slathered in whipped cream, then drizzled with chocolate syrup.

The moment that sugary explosion slid across his tongue John knew that Sherlock was now officially off the rails. That he was well and truly wound up and would do absolutely anything John wanted him to do. That the good detective would quite possibly eat the drapes if John just fed them to him with his own mouth.

Well then. That was good. It was time. Time to try something new. Something John had wanted to do since he was twenty-two years old. It was time to see how far Sherlock would go. And it didn't even require him to take his clothes off.

This was going to be good.

After chewing, swallowing, and naming the treat's component parts John opened his eyes. Legs spread either side of his, leaning so close he was breathing warm against John's face, Sherlock smiled back at him tenderly, eyes soft, and dear god suddenly it was overwhelming: John wanted to _pet _Sherlock, hold him, be under him, on top. He wanted to surround him with arms and legs and kiss his mouth until it was sore.

This time John leaned in, desperate for a kiss. Sherlock let him.

Surprisingly the kiss was soft, brief, quiet. Except the sigh as John pulled away.

Two heart beats, three, four. On the fifth he could speak, a whisper: "Ready?"

Sherlock nodded.

The good doctor stood, turned to the table, flushed when he felt Sherlock rise behind him. Reaching for a small object that had been there all night, John briefly wondered why Sherlock hadn't remarked on it, wondered if he'd have tried this earlier if he had.

With a tap and a few gestures John made his preparations. Then he turned toward his lover.

In the delicate cup of its own shell was a simple, perfect, raw egg yolk. Sherlock blinked at it several times. It was clear he had no idea where this was going.

Which was fucking fabulous. Because there are few things Sherlock loves more than not knowing what's going to happen next.

With an answering grin John tipped the egg yolk into his own mouth, pulled Sherlock close by his hips. Still the detective wasn't sure what was expected of him. Then John opened his mouth a little, stood on tip toe.

Oh. _Oh._

Slowly, very slowly Sherlock slid his long body down down down, until their mouths were level. One of them—maybe both—groaned a little, then each tilted his head to the right and, breathing fast, John leaned in and, lips barely touching, slid the raw egg yolk from his mouth and into Sherlock's.

Now it was a sure thing: Both moaned. Then slowly, very, very oh-fucking-hell-even-that-is-sexy slowly Sherlock moved out of his crouch, slip-sliding his body up along John's body, thigh dragging between John's legs, up against his very hard hard-on, until Sherlock was finally standing his full height, holding John's head, tilting his chin up, and then ghosting their lips together and with exquisite delicacy, passing the yolk from his own mouth and back in to John's.

Okay, pausing here for a brief message.

From the outside looking in what's going on right now may seem—odd. One might be given to thoughts along the lines of: "Well that's not very sanitary," or "salmonella comes from raw eggs, you know." And you know what? Noted, yes, duly noted. But John Watson will fervently tell you that until you try this at home you have no idea. Just. No. Oh. My. Damn. God. Idea.

As if to prove the point, right now the good doctor was pretty sure he couldn't have stopped shaking even if promised a million pounds, a butter dish with just butter in it, and walls free of bullet holes. It took him several very long moments to just calm-the-hell down, and rein in his breathing enough so he was no longer dizzy. And then a few thousand seconds more for Sherlock to slither back down John's front until his mouth was just a whisper lower than the doctor's.

John could feel the yolk at blood heat in his mouth. It was slick and delicate and seemed to tremble on his tongue. Some primal part of him wanted to _bite_ it, drive his teeth into its tenderness, then press his mouth against Sherlock's, smear their lips together, make a perfect, perfect mess.

Instead he leaned slowly in, and this time the yolk was propelled on a small moan as it slipped from between John's lips and through Sherlock's.

It was then that John realized how heavy Sherlock was, that for a few seconds he was quite possibly supporting half the other man's weight—then those moments passed and his lover rose slowly as he'd done before, the press of his cock a wordless affirmation that this was doing to him exactly what it was doing to John.

Again Sherlock dragged his hands from John's hips to the back of his head, and with his thumbs lifted the smaller man's chin. This time he leaned over him so heavily that John had to crouch a few inches, the yolk _falling _from Sherlock's mouth and into his—yet remaining intact.

This time John's hands drifted up along Sherlock's back until they slid into his hair. Twining fingertips through the longest curls, John tugged gently, insistently, until his lover slid low again, bulging cock rubbing along the leg John pressed hard between his, until Sherlock was almost _almost_ on his knees except he wasn't, he was holding tight to John and John was looking down and holding tight to him and the yolk was there, right there, trapped in John's mouth only by the hot, wet curl of his tongue and it took him a long, long time to lean over, so long to get close enough that he could unfurl that tongue bit by bit until it pushed between Sherlock's lips, slipping the soft, slick, wet, oh god yes wet tender morsel into his waiting mouth—Sherlock grunted low and long once, twice, three times—

—the fourth grunt turned into a ragged, low groan, Sherlock's cheeks flushed with scarlet and, going heavy and boneless in John's arms, Sherlock started coming, fully dressed in that fine, fine suit, washed in wave after wave of pleasure, bright yellow egg yolk dripping warm down his chin.

* * *

_Now I've only ever seen one scene from the Japanese film _Tampopo_ and it involved a raw egg and a fully-clothed orgasm (search for "Tampopo egg scene" on YouTube) so, you know, must give props where they're due. The rest of this fic came from either my humid imagination or the space aliens that pipe stories directly to my brain (which frankly is the best explanation as to where they're all coming from). Anyway, inventive suggestions as to what to feed Sherlock next, or thinky thoughts of any sort, are always welcome._


	11. Chapter 11

John was fucking beside himself. Absolutely god damned fucking _beside_ himself. As in, you know, on the freaking complete other side of his entire self.

And don't you dare tell him he's over-reacting because frankly, who the hell even asked you? No really, who? Because Dr. John H. Watson? The one with the _medical_ degree and the dozen-some-odd years practicing, you know, _medicine?_ He does not recall having asked you for your _medical_ opinion on this and so he will politely tell you to take your unsolicited viewpoint and to kindly _stuff __it __up __your __arse._

Breathe John.

_Breathe._

John took a deep slow breath. Let it out a bit less slowly. He took another, let that one out somewhat faster. He kept at this until he realized he was hyperventilating again. Dizzy, again. And knew that if he stood too fast and tried to locomote from the kitchen he was going to bang his head against the door frame. Again.

Okay. All right. Enough already. The case was over, a done deal. All was well, evil vanquished, the innocent victorious. So the guilt he had? Not getting him anywhere. The culpability he felt for suggesting to Sherlock that he take this stupid, god damn, idiotic, crappy case? Still getting him no where.

And really, it had sounded easy. To unmask a fraud posing as a doctor specializing in eating disorders Sherlock would be admitted to the man's 'spa.' Once there the detective would gather the evidence needed to take the scam artist down.

And that's exactly what happened. 'Evil vanquished, the innocent victorious,' remember? Easy-peasy, right?

Wrong. Because they'd needed seven days to close a case that should have taken less than two. But three blunders on the Yard's part, and one spa patient going into cardiac arrest had changed damn well everything.

Even that would have been okay but for one fact no one but John knew: To 'make it real' Sherlock decided the case required he _fucking __starve __himself_ while at the spa.

"No."

That had been John, the day Sherlock was going undercover. Standing at the kitchen table with a plate of toast in his hand. A plate Sherlock wouldn't take.

"John, I don't actually need your permi—"

"No no _no."_

"Not eating while I'm there will make it more believable I'm anorexic. It's not as prevalent among men as women, so it'd be helpful for me to—"

"Fuck it I said no." John gets sweary when he's hungry. He apparently also gets sweary when he thinks about Sherlock being hungry. To underscore his feelings on the matter the good doctor slammed the plate of toast onto the table with both hands. "Now eat."

Sherlock sighed, stood up, stood tall.

John glowered up at him, hands fisted at his sides. "Don't pull that shit, Sherlock. You don't intimidated me, you never have. And you don't need my permission but I'm still telling you no. So…_no."_

Sherlock leaned warm against John, pressed his mouth to the good doctor's temple. "I'm not trying to intimidate you." He spoke softly, as if saying the words just so would help his lover believe them. John felt Sherlock's lips curve into a smile. "I'm trying to give myself resolve against you, you tiny tyrant."

John breathed out a little laugh and Sherlock said softer still, "It's only for a day or two. Please?"

A begging Sherlock is a little something like a tall, warm, wonderful drug. So John said yes partly because he wanted a good hard hit of that, but mostly because Sherlock agreed—and swore on the skull's smooth, cool brow—that after the case he would eat _anything __he __was __told __to_ for three times as long as the case lasted.

John Watson: Not as stupid as he looks.

And then came all the bureaucratic snafus, the mistakes, the cardiac arrest—the damn mess that meant Sherlock was gone not for one day or two but for an entire week. Seven long days during which John knew, _knew_ Sherlock was not eating.

The first day his lover went without food John just nodded at everyone a lot. The second day the good doctor frowned quite a bit. The third and fourth days John knew Sherlock was in there not eating he was cross with everyone with whom he had the slightest contact. The fifth and sixth days Sherlock was going without food John was so god damn fucking dick shit cunt cock-sucking son-of-a-bitch fuck-you-twice sweary even the beat cops at the Yard widened their eyes.

By the time the case was closed near the end of that seventh day and John knew Sherlock was coming home, he was so unrelentingly full of worry jitters he actually had to drink two cups of coffee to calm himself the hell down.

Then Lestrade rang.

"No."

"John, I don't actually need your permission to—"

"Fuck it Greg, he can go over the case and give his statement tomorrow."

"It's not up to me, it's—" Gregory Lestrade looked at his mobile, blinked twice. He was pretty sure John Watson had just hung up in his ear.

...

Hands clasped behind his back to keep them from shaking, Sherlock stared out Lestrade's office window. Through the glass he could see the desk of fourteen detectives but, while waiting for Lestrade's return, Sherlock had eyes for only three.

First Dickens, at the middle left. She was a model of efficiency that one, fingers flying over her keyboard, answering her phone, chatting with colleagues. And now and again she popped a handful of almonds into her mouth and chewed slowly, meditatively. Sherlock had never stared so hard at a woman's mouth in his entire life.

A few minutes later he noticed Bell all the way in the back, eating a falafel with one hand, writing a report with the other. Sherlock was certain he could smell meat and onions through the intervening twenty feet and a sheet of smudged plate glass and wondered if anyone would notice if he started tonguing the window.

Then very close, almost right outside Lestrade's office there was Haddad. Smiley, corpulent, always-eating Haddad. Right now he poked at—and seemed to talk to—a large salad. And if Sherlock wasn't mistaken that divine-looking thing had buttery croutons and tomatoes and fat creamy bits of feta cheese and maybe those were cranberries in there and some walnuts and—and—Sherlock's brain bloomed with fantasies of plunging his hands into that over-sized bowl, opening his mouth, and just eating and moaning and eating and—oh god.

Sherlock blinked fast a couple dozen times. He was confused, alert, still, and shaky all at once. His tongue slicked repeatedly over his lips as if finding sustenance there. He knew he needed food. He really, really needed—

_John!_

Sherlock's heart kicked hard in his chest. Oh god there was John, striding through the station like a small, angry tank. The sight of him sent wildly mixed signals skittering through Sherlock's brain. John: Your much-missed lover! John: Very often the bringer of food! John: Almost small enough to pop into your mouth and—

The good doctor swept past a dozen desks as if every last one was empty, opened Lestrade's door so hard it banged against the wall, slammed it closed just as violently, grabbed his lover's hand and tugged him into a quick kiss then barked, "Sit down and open your mouth."

Sherlock blinked fast a couple dozen times, and right then a week's worth of iron resolve vanished instantly. "I am so hungry I would cannibalize Anderson," the detective whimpered. "John, I'm ready to _eat _Anderson and _enjoy __it."_ The hysterical little uptick in Sherlock's voice? So not John's imagination.

John banged a satchel onto Lestrade's desk. "Sit. Open."

Sherlock sat. Sherlock opened. And maybe, just maybe Sherlock moaned a little. He wasn't entirely certain because at this point he was pretty sure he'd been hallucinating for the last twenty hours.

Didn't matter, because John had a god damned litre of chocolate chip ice cream in one hand and a spoon freighted with it in the other and the second that stuff hit the back of his throat Sherlock knew he wasn't going to be able to keep quiet.

"John…John…oh sweet Jesus." Sherlock opened his mouth again, leaned toward the spoon as it came, closed his mouth around it so fast his teeth clicked against metal. A little frantic he gripped John at the waist, tugged him closer. "More," he panted, "more."

With compact, efficient movements John gave him more, as fast as humanly possible. For his part Sherlock was so eager his mouth barely closed to swallow before it flew open again.

Again, and again, efficiency-eagerness, efficiency-eagerness. Then John thought, _fuck __this_ and dug in deep, the next spoonful so damned lavish half made it to Sherlock's mouth, the rest slicked from the spoon, plummeting down.

Without hesitation Sherlock slid to his knees on the floor, bowed over John's foot and _licked_ the ice cream from the tip of his lover's shoe.

The jaw of every last detective at the desks nearest Lestrade's window dropped wide open.

Sherlock rose, sat back on his heels, looked up, opened up, grunted. John filled that waiting mouth. Sherlock groaned. Filled it again. Sherlock sighed. And again. Sherlock moaned. And one more time. Sherlock opened wide for that last spoonful, tilted his head back and laughed.

"Oh dear god." You could hear the smile in John's voice, the relief that wanted to bubble up into an outright giggle.

Sherlock's hands slid up to his lover's waist. "Don't stop John Johnny John, my beautiful, beautiful John."

Sherlock trembled against him, but whether from hunger or relief John didn't know and had no intention of wasting time finding out. Twisting in his lover's embrace he slammed the ice cream onto Lestrade's desk (lots of BAMFy slamming from John this week), yanked a can of chocolate sauce and one of whipped cream from that satchel and went to fucking town spraying and squirting and oozing it into that half-gone bucket of ice cream. Calories. It was all about the god damn calor—

_Oh._

Hands fisted around those tall cans as if he were about to drawl "Draw!" John twisted back around and just went right to the damn source. "Open."

Sherlock already was.

First a noisy, obscene-sounding squirt of cream right into the detective's mouth, followed immediately by a thick, heavy stream of chocolate sauce until there was no more room for either.

Sherlock hissed, closed his mouth, worked it around that sugary mess with something like ecstasy, while sixteen of Scotland Yard's finest forgot every single damn thing they were doing—Haddad even put down his salad—and just stared.

Make that seventeen.

Lestrade finally rounded the corner, arms full of too damn much paperwork—_seriously, in the age of computers what was with the paperwork? It was absurd. It was almost as if there was _more_ of the stuff, and it's not as if—_

Gregory Lestrade's long-legged stride faltered, slowed, came to a halt. He noticed the dead silence first—correction, silent but for three ringing phones—then noticed sixteen detectives all facing the same direction, every last one motionless, open-mouthed, and breathing heavy, like a nice little zombie horde.

"What the…" he muttered, following their gaze, then widening his own. "Jesus H. Christ."

...

"More," John said, not a question, just a sort of BAMFY observation, as he inserted the whipped cream plunger into Sherlock's mouth (they'd figured out it was faster) and let him use his teeth to activate the thing. Then Sherlock opened again, there came a gush of chocolate sauce, and everything was followed by some breathy, moany, relief-filled consumption. Lather, rinse, repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

"Oh John," Closing his eyes, Sherlock pressed his forehead against John's belly with a sigh. "I couldn't even think past the hunger. I'm an idiot. I'm—"

"Shut up," John whispered into that crazy mess of hair. "Just hush. And open your mouth again."

Sherlock sighed deep and shaky, like a little boy who's cried himself into exhaustion. He kissed John's stomach, pressed his face into it, "Yes, John," kissed again, "Yes John," and tilted back his head, mouth open, tongue thrust out.

"In or out? Either way, close the door."

Greg Lestrade looked behind him, as if perhaps there was someone else being bossed around. Nope, he appeared to be it. Greg frowned briefly. He was very not used to being pushed about by John Watson. Sherlock, yes, sure, that ship had long since sailed, but John? Polite, asks-very-little, little John? Immediately the detective inspector had the perverted need to boss John right back but he was a bigger man than that. (Hence the continued, unmurdered existence of Sherlock Holmes.)

"John, what the—"

"In or out?"

Greg opened his mouth to—

"In. Or. Out."

The DI stepped into his own office on tiptoe, closed the door with a quiet click. John and Sherlock both looked away from him at the same time and continued on as if he wasn't even there.

"Do you want to tell Greg that you haven't eaten anything for the last seven days because you're an idiot, or shall I?"

Immediately the shaky, still-possibly-hallucinating, very hungry consulting detective had the perverted need to be bossy back at John, but it turns out he'd become a bigger man than that. Damn the luck.

"But it was for the case, and—"

"Yes or no?"

Still quite on his knees, arms clutched around John's middle, in the middle of Lestrade's office, in the heart of Scotland Yard, Sherlock frowned up at John. Very quietly he said, "You do it."

John smiled. If a begging Sherlock was like a warm, wonderful drug a compliant one was like a shot of good, smooth gin.

"Open."

For a moment Greg thought John was talking to him and he almost turned and left his own office. Right then was the first time—though far from the last—Lestrade realized that, though small, John Watson could absolutely and completely fill a room when he wanted to.

Sherlock opened his mouth wide and Gregory Lestrade almost left the office under his own urgent advisement. Good god he never realized how sexual an open mouth could look. When a man was on his knees. With his eyes closed. Long arms wrapped around another man's waist. While the other man repeatedly spoon-fed him half-melted ice cream dripping with chocolate syrup. Then…um…wiped away a dribble with his finger. And the other bloke, the one on his knees, um, grabbed at the other one's wrist and _sucked_ on that chocolate-smudged finger, and—

Greg opened his mouth so he could breathe without wheezing. He had decided quite awhile back that he did not need to interrupt this show. At any cost. If what John said was true and Sherlock, the idiot, hadn't eaten for the last seven days—well fuck it gentlemen, do carry on.

They did.

John had a lot of food in that satchel, actually, but instead of a nice medley they seemed to have gone directly to the smash number one hit and put that fucker on replay. John didn't care. Tomorrow was for well-balanced, today was for fat and calories and later on possibly some annoyed swearing at his own personal idiot and then maybe some sex.

Sherlock heard John think the word and then Sherlock decided to top from the bottom, as it were. "More," he whispered, opening his mouth yet again, and when John brought up that heaping spoon of ice cream Sherlock shook his head and stared pointedly at John's mouth.

_And_ _only __just __now_ did John kind of, more or less, sort of register where they were and what they were doing and who was watching.

Eighteen people watched the good doctor waver. Only one of them held his eye and whispered softly, "They don't matter."

It wasn't that. John didn't care what most of these people thought of them, no. What he did care about was keeping what was precious…personal.

Then again what was precious was this strange, beautiful, damaged creature on his knees. John knew that more than he wanted to keep their private life a bit private, Sherlock desperately wanted everyone to know how much he, Sherlock Holmes, was wanted. And not wanted by someone as freakish as himself, but by someone the rest of them respected, liked, admired.

John stroked Sherlock's hair off his brow, then kissed his forehead. "Just a little," he whispered against the warm skin, "then I take you home and we do this properly."

_This_ might mean feeding Sherlock. _This_ might mean sex. _This_ might mean feeding Sherlock during sex. Sherlock had no clue. Which made him quite possibly happier than he already was. "Yes, John."

_Compliant__…__docile__…__submissive._ Whatever you wanted to call it, it had the interesting tendency to make John, mmmmm, hard. And compliant. Accommodating. Pliable. Was it possible they were both topping from the bottom? John had no clue. Didn't matter. Stop thinking John. Feed Sherlock, John.

And so John did.

That next spoon of ice cream went into his own mouth. Then John Watson leaned down and kissed that chilly, sweet confection into his lover's.

Only after he'd made the sound did Greg realize the sound he'd made had come from him. Briefly he was grateful his office door was closed and the only people who could have heard him make the sound were not even, technically, aware he existed.

And besides, that breathy, moany, sort of panting noise that was filling the room? The one coming from Sherlock? Much louder than the surprised little, "Oh fuck," Greg'd just uttered.

The second spoonful that went from John's to Sherlock's mouth required two hands, in that John put that spoon down after, ran his fingers deep into Sherlock's hair, and pulled his head back far enough to expose a tender curve of neck. He also got in on the racket, groaning as he passed the food from his mouth to Sherlock's. Quite possibly the sound of John pulled another unexpected sound from Greg and at this point the DI was feeling kind of dizzy and thinking, "I did not see my day turning out this way."

The question, of course, would be exactly how his night was going to end up.

"Ready to go home now, love?" John murmured against Sherlock's mouth. "Or shall I show them how I make you come, too?"

As soon as the words were out of his mouth John _almost_ regretted them. Because of all the people John knows—and he knows a great many—this was the one most likely to say, "Yes."

"No," Sherlock whispered back. "Let's show them how I make _you_ come."

John laughed so hard he was pretty sure he sprained something.

Later on, after they went home and he got a proper meal into the man, they went ahead and made each other come. There was plenty more ice cream involved. Also whipped cream. Some butter. A surprising amount of cheese. Four packets of roast chicken crisps (don't ask). And finally, somewhere around three in the morning, they did an extremely interesting thing with chocolate cake.

_It was mentioned to me that eating so much sugar after fasting may be a stellar way to do grave damage to your health. So, simply put: Please don't do that. Sherlock's not real (I know, damn it, I can't believe it either), so of course it won't hurt him. In the meantime, thank you Coragyps for asking to see John getting Sherlock to eat in front of Lestrade and company. And for anyone who missed the actual, you know, sex, it'll resurface in the next chapter._

_In the meantime if someone with BAMF icon/macro skills wanted to make one that said "John Watson: god damn fucking dick shit cunt cock-sucking son-of-a-bitch fuck-you-twice sweary," I'd be so happy I'd write something at your request. And probably flail a great deal._


	12. Chapter 12

"Oh John, _John_…stop."

John stopped.

"This isn't what she meant, John."

Warm honey dripped down the inside of Sherlock's bare thigh. Stretched out on the bed between those long limbs, John followed the sweet, dark meander with his eyes but no longer with the tip of his tongue. As if he could feel the good doctor's gaze, Sherlock unconsciously spread his legs wider.

"She…meant for us to compare. Learn."

John licked his lips when the honey finally dripped slow and thick onto the towel tucked under his lover. And though he saw beautiful, nearly black buckwheat honey pooling heavy and rich, his tongue briefly tasted Sherlock's come, so help him.

"This…could…alter what we learn. I should've said something before, I know, but…" Sherlock's hips tilted up, once, twice. Actually they kept thrusting up as Sherlock talked, a tiny, sinuous punctuation underscoring everything he said. "…you're too persuasive sometimes."

The faint flavor of molasses and malt, spice and currants lingered on John's tongue. He had a feeling that he could try every one of the dozen honeys they were meant to sample tonight and this one would be his favorite. The fact that it looked unbelievably erotic—nearly black, oozing down Sherlock's pale flesh—went far toward explaining the erection he had digging into the sheets.

"—all right?"

Sherlock's hips stilled at last and this was somehow cue for a tiny pool of honey to snake from Sherlock's balls, curve under, down, and casual as you damn well please, toward the cleft of his arse. John only managed to blink his gaze away from the really rather mesmerizing sight on the second, "all right?"

"What?"

As if waiting for some sort of gynecological exam, Sherlock kept his legs wide open, along with his mouth. "You're not listening?"

John flicked his gaze down again, but just for a second. The honey well and truly was between the nice, round globes of Sherlock's arse thankyouverymuch.

"Not even a little bit Sherlock."

A normal person might have snapped his thighs closed, huffed, and maybe harangued his lover for inattention. Sherlock, in case one needs reminding, is not exactly normal. His reply was to put his hand between his own legs, drag his fingers through the honey, then shove those fingers in his mouth and suck.

John could be forgiven for a rather spontaneous, "Oh fuck."

Sherlock licked his fingers clean, shook his head. "Oh, everything's in there. There's the salt of my sweat, sexual musk for lack of a better term, your saliva—it's a complete mess of flavors."

It's not often anymore that John says to himself _the differences between us sometimes makes my head want to explode_ but right now? Right now was one of those times.

Because the fact that Sherlock could have gotten as far as dripping precome on his own belly while John licked and sucked honey from between his legs, and not only stop the music and call a halt to the parade, but actually switch to experimental mode _while his legs were spread wide,_ honey oozed into his arsehole, and his lover breathed hot breath across his cock and balls, well…

John shrugged, frowned, and finally blinked his gaze back up in time to meet Sherlock's return stare as his lover lifted his head and repeated, "—okay?"

Unwilling to admit he had no clue what he was agreeing to, John smiled, lightly kissed the inside of Sherlock's thigh—a good six inches up and away from the Zone of Temptation—and said brightly, "Okay."

Then he fetched a hot, wet flannel and helped Sherlock clean himself up and yes, don't tell, but he sneaked at least three tastes of the honey when it accidentally smeared on the back of his hand. And you know what? It did taste of his lover's skin and his sweat and that intense smell-taste of Sherlock when he was aroused. In short it tasted god damned glorious.

...

It started that night, with the dozen honeys. Before the evening was over they learned they could both tease out subtle flavors, discerning the fireweed from the sage, the sourwood from the dandelion, though each took different paths to get there.

Yes, it started that night, but that's not where it stopped.

While _The Case of Sweet Revenge—_as John later wrote it up—probably would have taken a week at most under normal conditions, it turned out John and Sherlock stayed undercover at the Killer Croissant Company for three weeks and four very interesting reasons.

First and foremost: While solving the murder of the company's owner, they discovered an embezzlement scheme on the order of fifty million quid.

Second: The Killer Croissant Company was housed in the remains of a notorious old category A prison at the edge of Spitalfields and the site of seven unsolved fifty-year-old murders—not counting the usual inmate-on-inmate violence. These cold cases called to Sherlock the way fresh baked bread calls to the carb addict.

Third: As part of their undercover gig John and Sherlock's job required tasting new ingredients (hence the honey) and products and this was where each man discovered he was, to some degree, what's known as a supertaster.

After one bite John could suggest a _two gram_ reduction in salt and a fifteen gram boost in sugar and a recipe previously prosaic became subtle, complex, rich, and oh by the way, _fucking awesome._

Sherlock, on the other hand, knew when something was missing. Add walnuts to this. Mix cream with that. Lemon juice here. Try mint tea as the liquid for this one and also blueberries.

The fourth and final reason they stayed as long as they did was almost predictable. Sherlock got addicted to the deduction. To tasting, smelling, touching a scone, a muffin, a croissant, and peeling back its layers literally and figuratively to unearth what was in it and what would make it better.

The marvelous side benefit to this, in John's humble opinion? The glorious boon neither of them saw coming, couldn't have seen coming, and even as it was happening neither believed it, even while Sherlock was, you know, _doing it?_

Sherlock was eating.

No, that's not right.

Sherlock was demolishing. Glutting. Wolfing. _De-fucking-vouring. _Everything.

Always, _always_ one to take his work home with him, the great detective carted box after box back from the bakery and stayed up through half the night teasing out variables (ingredients) writing down new formulas (recipes), drawing conclusions (um, conclusions).

And John? He was right there with his sweetie (sort of literally this time) sampling, suggesting, arguing and the next day their boss (Sherlock actually called her that; possibly the first time the words 'my boss' ever left his mouth) would implement their suggestions and then they'd take the result of _that_ home and maybe there'd be a new round of tweaks or maybe not, but either way they were in this god damn glorious feedback loop that seemed all reward and no risk.

And oh the rewards. John will tell you that the sex started with him, he's not embarrassed about admitting that _at all._ Seeing Sherlock eating, seeing Sherlock _lusting_ for food went right from lighting up the pleasure center of John's brain to giving him hard-on after hard-on after "Jesus Sherlock get over here _now."_

And while John enjoys sex, yes, those three weeks would go down not only as some of the best of his life, but pretty much the only time he'd honestly apply to himself the term _wildly over-sexed hell yes boo-yah._

"Oh Sherlock, Sherlock, _Sherlock."_

They didn't even make it to the bedroom this time. Instead John—naked from the waist down, bejumpered from the middle on up—straddled Sherlock on his chair at the kitchen table and he rutted up against the man's belly so hard and fast _the chair was actually moving backward._

John didn't care because oh god _there was a belly._ On Sherlock. As in the consulting detective had already put on five pounds (after the third and Sherlock's vague complaint, John surreptitiously broke the scale) and every teeny tiny pound had found its way to Sherlock's belly or his bum.

"John…"

And John couldn't get enough. It was getting so bad that all he had to do was catch a glimpse of bare arse or naked tum and his hand would clamp over his cock and he'd start rubbing before he even realized what he was doing.

"Oh god Sherlock, oh god."

Like now. As that chair skidded backward across the kitchen floor John had his eyes screwed shut while visualizing over and over Sherlock reaching up to get something from on top of the fridge and his t-shirt rode up and his PJ bottoms rode down and that belly, _that ever so slightly poochy tummy_ made its supremely sexual self known and good god John had half his kit off before Sherlock had even turned completely around.

"John…"

For his part Sherlock's a super-genius. He knew the scale was broken but to everything there's a risk-reward ratio and while he didn't particularly like getting heavier he adored John's reaction to it and he _craved _the incredibly subtle nature of these particular deductions, how such small changes to a recipe could lead to such noticeable improvements and so he ate and he—to his own great surprise—gained weight, and John went absolutely bug-fuck and here they were, dangerously close to breaking another piece of furniture.

"Oh god, oh god, Sherlock, Sherlock!"

Not that either of them cared. If the chair, like the table, wasn't at least thirty years old it wasn't a day. And if John wasn't less than 30 seconds away from going off like a Christmas cracker then—well, no analogy was possible because John _was_ less than 30 seconds away from going off and he knew it and as a result he just got himself into even more of a lather.

"Belly," he panted, pumping his hips like a horny rabbit on speed, "oh god Sherlock, it feels—" it felt like yielding, like spreading, like softness, like heat, that teeny tiny layer of glorious extra weight on Sherlock's stomach, "—so good so impossibly good."

And John got it now, he totally totally got why Sherlock loved doing exactly this to him and _this,_ this was tummy fuckery, belly bumping, midriff mating, it was—oh shut John up because he could go on all day and it would only go downhill from here and here was—

"Love. Love, oh god I love this Sherlock, I love this so much I'm, I'm…I…oh…oh…gdhdnnn!"

Sherlock probably wouldn't have come just then, because honestly he was distracted by how turned on John was, but when John started coming, he also clenched the hands he had clamped on Sherlock's shoulders and ten nails dug into skin and scored it, and _then_ John sort of reached behind him and grabbed Sherlock's cock like it was some sort of handle and apparently those two things were all that was necessary to take the consulting detective from half hard to Christmas cracker territory, and about ten seconds after John spurted his last juicy bit of come across Sherlock's bodacious belly Sherlock fired off all over John's wrist and the floor and quite possibly the underside of the kitchen table.

Afterward Sherlock—as in Sherlock—buttered them two scones each (cinnamon-walnut-cherry (Sherlock's invention) and lemon thyme, cheese, and chive (a recipe perfected by John)), and as they came down from their high John pretty much figured that if he had to pick the time of his demise, dropping dead right about now would be as good a time as any he was pretty much that contentedly happy.

He amended that slightly at the end of the third week when he noticed that Sherlock had fixed the scale and that the good detective had put on not merely five, not six or seven, but nearly ten pounds.

Seeing _that_ John did Sherlock on the floor _that instant_ and if by did him you mean got on his back and grabbed hold of Sherlock's plump posterior while the detective rammed into him then we're on the same page.

Being as John was sort of half draped over the scale at the time of said ramming, they ended up breaking the thing. This time for real.

Afterward they had two chocolate croissants each and tea.

Oh, and after _that_ Sherlock texted Lestrade with the name of the croissant queen's killer, solutions to _eight_ of the seven cold cases, and a recipe for curry-cheddar muffins that were to die for.

_DarthHelloKitty __thought the bakery case mentioned in Minutiae 17__ would make a great Feeding Sherlock, and Mustangwoman said it'd __be sweet if I added a dark-honey-on-John segment to this story and so here they are (though the honey's on the other foot, so to speak *cough*), combined into a calorie-rich sexings. In my head canon Sherlock never does lose all the weight._


	13. Chapter 13

"One bite."

He was a cautious man.

"No."

Which was why it bordered on the ridiculous at this point.

"Please?"

Because he was generally always careful.

"No."

He usually thought ahead.

"Two bites."

He almost always looked before leaping.

"No."

And yet it did not seem to help _one damn bit._

"Three bites?"

Finally John scowled.

"You're doing it backwards you big git. If I don't want one I certainly don't want three. Go away."

Perched primly on the coffee table Sherlock held a chipped plate tightly against his knees. The sandwich on it had been cut into so many tiny squares it looked like an art installation. "One then?"

John didn't answer, just slumped lower on the sofa, legs either side of Sherlock's, and scowled harder.

"You're having what they call a large local reaction."

John sighed. He knew where this was about to go if he let it.

"It wasn't my fault."

Sherlock would insist very guiltily that he was not guilty.

"And I'm so sorry."

John would feel bad that Sherlock felt bad.

"I wish it had been me."

And John would try and soothe Sherlock.

"Really I do."

And through such trickery Sherlock would comfort John.

"I don't know why they always come for you."

Well the good doctor was having none of it.

Because, frankly, John is god damn sick of being the careful one, the sensible one, the one who was the thinking-ahead-sitting-down-type and _still_ ending up being the one needing the antihistamines, the plasters, the soothing creams, the paracetamol, and the comforting.

"Just one?"

John frowned bigger, harder, more lavishly, and crossed his arms.

"Fucking bloody hell!"

John uncrossed his damned arms and felt like crying.

...

"She makes both Mycroft _and_ me look like imbeciles, John."

That was how it started—was it only six hours ago?—and probably that was the point at which John should have realized he and his lover were at that moment _being _a pair (of imbeciles), skulking around a suspect's house (into which they had illegally entered). At the end of a fruitless search they stood hissing at one another in her empty kitchen.

"As ringing an endorsement as that is, she was panicked, Sherlock."

But John's no seer, so he'd gone ahead and argued with his lover, guiding them inextricably toward antihistamines, plasters, and paracetamol.

"And as a war veteran I'll tell you first-hand: panicked people run on their reptile brain."

Sherlock had felt compelled to rise to the defense of geniuses everywhere. "She's a physics professor at Oxford, John. She spends her holidays consulting for the Large Hadron Collider. Cambridge and Yale teach from the textbooks she pens."

Oh god. _Pens._ Sherlock was moving fast toward pedantic. John knew his lover didn't wish to be swayed, so he introduced evidence that would sway.

"Do you remember when you broke your bum falling from that blue whale replica?"

Sherlock dropped chin to chest. "Of course."

"And do you remember when you ate dumbcane to prove it wasn't poisonous—and your entire mouth went all numb and drooly?"

All expression washed from Sherlock's face. "I may recall—."

"Oh, and do you also recall the time you put the heel of one of your stilettos—oh by the way, where are those black beauties?—inside m—"

_"What's your point John?"_

"Even geniuses have an off day."

Which was how they ended up in the suspect's backyard, looking for a buried laptop.

...

"I'm sorry John."

Sherlock gripped the sandwich plate so hard his knuckles showed white in pale skin. That took some damn doing.

John held his hands up as if prepping for surgery. The hands he'd just tried to jam under his arms in a fit of pique. They throbbed their unhappiness at him, so he fobbed that unhappiness onto Sherlock.

"If you don't get, you damned git, I'm not going to be responsible for where that sandwich ends up."

Sherlock sat straighter, knees jammed together tightly. "The doctor said you shouldn't have the antihistamines on an empty stomach."

Since when did Sherlock listen to doctors?

"Since when do you listen to doctors? You never do what they say unless I tie you down and make you."

Sherlock lifted his chin. "That's different. I'm allowed to do bad things to myself, you're not."

John squinted. "That's hypocritical."

Head tilt. "So?"

"Go away."

John held his hands to his chest, closed his eyes, and pretended Sherlock wasn't there.

...

The good doctor's reptile brain was smart. It had made him run. But not before a few things happened very fast.

Stepping out into the suspects backyard Sherlock and John had:

* Noticed a swarm of honey bees buzzing high over the back garden. "Don't worry John, they're leaving. Probably didn't find the new nesting site they were looking for."

* Heard a siren in the distance. "Shit Sherlock, Greg's gonna have our hides. Again. Can we hurry this up?"

* Zoned in on the most obvious location to look in the suspect's bare yard. The ground beneath the picnic table. "Let's just move it over there. You take that end love, I'll get—_oooooooh fuuuuuuuuucking goooooooooooooood."_

When a honey bee stings, it releases pheromones that stimulate its kin to attack. So when John and Sherlock picked up the table—failing to see the hundred or so bees still clinging to its underside—a lot of stinging insects got a lot of inspiration as John's hands closed around them.

Sherlock caught up with his sweetheart a good half mile down the road. The several positives to all that running: The only part of John that got stung were his hands. Also, Lestrade was later unable to unequivocally _prove_ they'd been at the suspect's house, performing an illegal search. And finally, John stopped running right in front of a police cruiser. The constables were really rather nice about everything and took them to 221B.

The single negative to all that running: John's racing heart had pumped the apitoxin into his body like woah and damn. Though he'd soaked those hands in the kitchen sink for twenty minutes, he'd still had a histamine reaction that included a great deal of swelling and an even larger amount of swearing.

...

"Oh fuck I am so god damn serious. You need to go away."

John's skin itched. He couldn't do anything about that really because the fingers of his swollen hands _wouldn't bend._ So John couldn't really scratch. The whole unscratched itch thing? It was making him so swear he was actually whispering.

So Sherlock whispered back. "The antihistamines and pain killers will start working soon. If you don't get nauseous first from taking all those drugs on an empty stomach."

John opened his mouth to reply but Sherlock put the sandwich plate on the coffee table and stood. He looked down at John, then off toward the stairs.

"I'll go away now," he said to the stairs.

John looked at Sherlock not looking at him and suddenly felt put out. Yes, he was complaining. Yes he was swearing. And yes he told Sherlock to go away. But Sherlock wasn't actually supposed to, you know, _damn well go away._

The good and petulant doctor was about to say something when his sweetheart turned and left the room. By way of a brief detour to the kitchen.

...

Ten minutes of self-pity and ennui followed. In that dull and quiet time John thought about bees. He thought about the drugs in his system meant to counteract the bees. He thought about the nausea he might or might not be feeling. The good doctor was progressing from self-pity to a big bout of petulance when he heard…precisely that thing he was meant to hear.

He heard his lover coming slowly down the stairs.

Which doesn't sound like much, does it?

Well you're not John. And you don't live with Sherlock.

We'll clarify then, so you'll understand. Sherlock came down their stairs in a way that allowed John to _hear the heels._

John blinked once, twice, and just like that he forgot about pity and he forgot about petulance and he started thinking about his sweetheart, his one-true-sometimes-deeply-annoying-love coming to him—he couldn't see him but John would bet you a hundred pounds Sherlock was fuckin' promenading—wearing a pair of black stilettos.

John licked his lips. Once. Twice.

The sharp, deliberate sound stopped.

John turned.

Sherlock stood in their sitting room doorway.

Naked.

Chin down. Eyes up.

Legs crossed at the ankle.

Gorgeous feet shod in patent-black four-inch heels.

Bye, bye ennui.

"Hello, beautiful."

Sherlock's tongue poked out of his mouth, lapped those delicious words up. He stood taller, took a deep breath, chest broadening, waist narrowing, god damned curves everywhere.

John's tongue poked out of his mouth, as if to lap the delicious man up. Which really was rather the point.

With a lop-sided grin Sherlock sashayed toward his lover, every fucking inch of him a hip-swaying model on a cat walk.

John often wonders where Sherlock's learned such things, this eccentric genius who doesn't know that coffee comes from coffee beans or that wool grows on sheep.

Didn't matter.

The cock of those hips as he strutted was what mattered. The look in his eyes as they held John's was what mattered. And that half-smile that said, _yes, my tiny tyrant, usually you _are_ the boss of me, but honey sometimes I know _exactly_ how to be the boss of you._

Sherlock stopped in front of the sofa and John, the coffee table a low reef between them. He looked down at his lover. His lover looked up at him, and though both men knew John was going exactly nowhere, the good doctor still wore an expression that said, _Go ahead, make this worth my while; try and give me a reason to cancel my date with petulance and self-pity._

Sherlock raised his leg, placed one foot on the table with a sharp-heeled click.

_Okay then. Well played, my love. Reason enough._

Yet of course Sherlock was about to give John more.

Now John may be forgiven for having completely missed the small jar of honey in Sherlock's hand. John maybe, just maybe, had not been looking anywhere near Sherlock's hand.

Grinning like a Cheshire cat, Sherlock slowly bent over his raised leg, placed the honey on the table, opened it and dipped the tip of one long finger into the jar.

Holding John's eye he swirled that finger slowly through the thick amber, then Sherlock slid that finger into his open mouth and along his tongue. And didn't close his mouth.

Instead Sherlock pushed that finger deeper, then sort of almost pulled it out. Then pushed it back again. Then nearly pulled it out. And can you finger-fuck your own mouth if you don't technically _close_ your mouth?

Apparently you can.

John was already breathing faster.

Sherlock withdrew that finger, licked at the corner of his mouth, dipped into the thick liquid again.

When he withdrew his honey-laden finger this time he held it over the tip of his stiletto, until the toe of the shoe glistened sweet with the stuff.

He straightened, slid his finger in his mouth, and this time he sucked.

And waited.

People do so love boxes. Especially when it comes to sex. Bottom. Top. Domination. Submission. Pleasure. Pain.

John Watson's opinion? Fuck it all.

John can, does, and will do whatever the hell he likes without being boxed or labeled, without being anything other than a man enjoying sex with his lover in whatever way they please.

So when he slid off the sofa and to his knees on the floor? When he held his aching hands to his chest and bent low to lick at the toe of Sherlock's stiletto? Well, the good doctor wasn't submitting, he wasn't surrendering, and he sure as hell wasn't debasing himself. What John was doing was just this: loving, loving _loving_ the drag of his tongue over the shiny-slick toe of that shoe, relishing the low sound Sherlock made as he did it, loving so very much the sweetness of the honey as it gathered in the curl of his tongue.

For a long time John licked. Far longer than necessary. Or exactly long enough.

Eventually he straightened. Looked up.

And waited.

Sherlock lowered his foot to the floor. Finally tugged his finger out of his mouth. Licked at his lips again. Then he cocked his hip, raised the other leg, clicked that heel onto the table and, standing very tall for a moment, bent over again and reached for the honey.

This time John was there before Sherlock had even finished, captured his lover's pale finger gently with teeth, sucking it into his mouth with a moan.

Only after he'd cleaned it bare did he nuzzle it out of the way, lean down, then lick and lick and lick at the toe of Sherlock's pretty shoe.

John could feel his pulse pounding hard in his throat, between his legs. He wanted to touch Sherlock's foot. He wanted to slowly run fingers over the cool, glossy shoe, then up along warm bare ankles, gently along—

_Oh damn. Damn. Double double damn._

—Sherlock's shaved leg.

John grunted.

_I did not know I had this kink._

John bit his lip.

_No, I really did not know._

John sighed a soft breath, then gently ran his tongue up Sherlock's smooth, smooth shin.

Sherlock crooned wordless approval. After long seconds John pulled away a little, just enough, and he watched Sherlock drizzle-drip-smear honey at his ankle, along the side of his calf, across shin, to knee, and maybe John made some wordless sound, too, only his was a whole lot more demanding.

_Let me, let me, let me._

Sherlock straightened, slid his foot a little closer to John.

This time the good doctor started high, went low.

John nibbled the honey from Sherlock's knee with teeth, sucked it from shin with pursed lips, trailed a hot tongue down, down, down along that long, long calf until finally he was at the tapered ankle, where he set up shop for a little while, pressing his mouth against strong, delicate bones, then his cheek, forehead, nose, rubbing against his lover's smooth skin like a contented cat against its master.

Perhaps the good doctor would be there still if Sherlock hadn't slid a hand beneath his lover's chin, lifted his head, and kissed him.

John's lips were sweet, John's lips are always sweet, even when they're salty from the sweat of a chase or tart with tea, always they taste to Sherlock like honey and warmth and home. And so Sherlock lapped at John's mouth, his turn to be contented, his turn to be mastered.

When finally he pulled away and straightened they were both breathing heavy, they were both ready for more.

So of course Sherlock gave them more.

Slowly he slid his heel-shod foot from the table. Slowly he turned toward the kitchen. And yeah, slowly he damn well proma-fucking-naded to that kitchen, hips swaying.

And that arse, that glory, that beauty, that, that, that—oh damn it, just insert a whole bunch of breathless superlatives here because all of them apply, every last one, loudly and twice—that gorgeous, plush behind? The one that had taken the brunt of the nearly ten pounds Sherlock had put on several months ago? That one?

Yes, well, it looked, if possible, all the more magnificent as its owner strutted on four inch heels, so very, very aware he was being watched, trying so very, very hard to be worth watching.

Only once Sherlock disappeared into the kitchen did John realize he'd been holding his breath for long seconds and that he'd _completely forgotten about his hands._

"Oh," he sighed softly, no longer caring about swollen, bee-stung fingers, no longer feeling one jot of self-pity, no, not even a little. What John was feeling now was— "Oh," he sighed again when Sherlock reappeared in the kitchen doorway.

Now here's something you need to know about the Holmes-Watson household: It contains many, many sweet things. Its kitchen holds honeys, and jams, it contains sauces, and syrups and sweet creams.

Though—nearly two years after starting to feed Sherlock—Sherlock's actually become something of a consistent eater, sexy old habits do indeed die hard. So even though John doesn't strictly _need_ to feed Sherlock much anymore, sometimes Sherlock gives John a look, or sometimes John gives Sherlock a look and, well out comes the honey or the jam or the sweet, sweet cream.

Perhaps you've noticed?

Yes. Well.

Sherlock now held in his hand one such aid. Perhaps John's favorite. No, definitely John's favorite.

Sherlock sauntered across the room—seriously, where did he learn that walk? That crossing each leg in front of the other thing?—and it took a moment for the good doctor to realize that the strut had a tempo, and it was then John heard the distant babble of the neighbor's radio.

John grinned. Did Sherlock even realize he swayed those beautiful hips to Bachman-Turner Overdrive's _Taking Care of Business?_

Sherlock again stood in front of the coffee table. Sherlock stepped up on the coffee table. Sherlock looked down at John. Sherlock kept the beat with the silent tapping of one glistening stiletto.

Oh yeah. Sherlock knew.

Still kneeling on the floor, John looked at his lover's spread legs. Then he looked up. And up and oh god yes, up.

A consulting detective smiled down at him and then that detective—still keeping the beat mind you, with just a little sway of the hip—lifted his hand, held it out.

And waited.

John returned that smile. John closed his eyes. And John opened his mouth.

A small twist of an elegant wrist and from that lofty height Sherlock drizzled-dripped-trickled the sweetest, darkest, thickest damn chocolate sauce you will _ever_ taste unerringly into John's mouth, until the good doctor was filled.

And then he still didn't stop.

And now Sherlock's aim was not quite so true.

John opened his eyes in time to see his lover step down from the coffee table, push it back with a heel, then join him on his knees.

Sherlock took hold of John's head—careful, careful of his lover's hands between them—and he licked deeply into John's mouth. The chocolate was soft and hot with John's body heat, it was sweet and dark and it tasted of John, of John, of John.

Breathing faster Sherlock lapped and licked and sighed, he swiped his tongue across the drizzle-drip-trickle of chocolate on John's chin, then at his cheeks, across his lips, over and over and over until John was sighing, until John was clean.

"John."

It was all Sherlock said, but the good doctor interpreted that single breathy word. It mean _let me feed you again,_ it meant _lay back for me,_ and it meant, oh it very much meant _dear god I need so badly to fuck you._

With the press of a shoulder John pushed the coffee table further away, stretched himself out on the floor in front of the sofa, arms over his head, legs spread.

Sherlock grinned, hovered over his lover on hands and knees. "John," he said again, softly, and this time it meant exactly the same thing: _feed…fuck…feed…fuck…I am going to…I am very much going to._

Sherlock twisted toward the plate still perched on the coffee table. He plucked up a tiny sandwich square in his teeth, and then returning, he lowered himself down. John opened his mouth, grunted when Sherlock shoved the sandwich past his teeth with his tongue. John chewed, John swallowed.

Hungry, hungry, John was hungry now. So he opened his mouth again and he grunted again, and like a great pale bird Sherlock plucked up food with his teeth, then hovered, then dipped, then fed, and fed, and fed.

By the time that sandwich was gone both of them were chattery with small sounds, sighs, murmurs, pleas, and Sherlock's hard, heavy cock ground slowly against John's clothed one.

Finally the good doctor canted his hips insistently up, said "trousers," and Sherlock nodded, rose, reached for button and zipper and then his own mouth.

He licked his fingers wet, then ran them over his cock. He did it again and again, and then he did it some more, this time running wet fingers against John's arse and he did _that _again and again and slowly, until John was hard and dripping.

Sherlock ran the long fingers of his other hand through that precome and just as he pressed those fingers to John's mouth, he pressed his cock into John's arse.

"Yes," sighed one man.

"Oh god," said the other.

And right about then—cock buried deep inside John—Sherlock stopped moving.

John groaned.

The good doctor's learned by now that almost nothing will make Sherlock move if Sherlock's not ready to move. No, John can't control Sherlock, but he sure as hell can control himself.

So John squinted his eyes shut, arched his neck, and he _writhed_ on that cock inside him. Thighs clamped hard around Sherlock's hips, feet pressed hard on the floor, John squirmed and struggled and thrashed, every other movement pulling Sherlock out of him a little, every other movement thrusting him deep again.

It was good, so very good, and not good enough, but John wouldn't ask, no, John would wait because he _can_ wait, he'd wait for Sherlock to move, to thrust, to fucking ride him into the rug, he'd—he'd—

Sherlock's mouth was at his mouth, just barely, hardly at all, and it was wet it was sweet it was—

John opened his eyes and drizzling-dripping-trickling from Sherlock's mouth was a dark, sweet stream of chocolate.

John groaned and licked at Sherlock's pursed lips and the moment his tongue made that first swipe Sherlock started driving his cock in and out of John's arse.

In lieu of "oh god yes," John lapped over and over at Sherlock's mouth, his over-stimulated reptile brain confusing the pleasure of the feeding with the pleasure of the fucking, until everything, the taste of the chocolate, the press of Sherlock's lips, the hard slide of Sherlock's cock turned into one big "oh fucking god yes," and with the rub and pull and push of Sherlock's hand on him John started coming.

Sherlock's reptile brain is almost as brilliant as the rest of him, so it kept him hard and thrusting while John came. It opened his mouth for him so he could fill John's with the last sweet bit of chocolate, it helped him croon senseless words of desire and encouragement and need.

Then finally, as John sighed a moan and his hips dropped down to the floor, that reptile brain did what John had not, it begged.

_Come._

_Come._

_Oh dear god come._

Perverse, perverse, _perverse_ creature that he is Sherlock didn't, and he didn't and still he didn't and then—when John so very carefully pushed one honey-slathered, bee-stung finger into his lover's mouth—Sherlock arched his back with a groan and came until his arms shook.

...

It took nearly a week for John's hands to return to normal.

So for nearly a week Sherlock fed John.

And yes, by fed we mean food. By fed we mean fucking. By fed we mean thin strips of buttered toast pushed suggestively into a laughing mouth. We mean eggs pressed against tongue by long fingers. We mean entirely too much sticky toffee pudding or jam or pasta sauce smeared across lips, and really more caramel and chocolate and honey than was strictly necessary drizzled-dripped-trickled everywhere on everything, and licked off until their bellies were full and their cocks so very, very hard.

It was a rather glorious week.

Yet a half dozen years later John had sort of forgotten about it, until he happened upon the painkillers the doctor had prescribed, tablets long since expired.

Suddenly he remembered those seven days in vivid detail. The memories made his hands kind of ache. They made him giggle. They made him really, _really_ hard.

"Sherlock?"

John dropped the pill bottle back into the vanity's drawer. He stood up, mentally cataloging the contents of the kitchen on his way to the sitting room.

_"Sherlock?"_

By the time John found his husband he was already breathing hard.

"Ah…there you are."

___This chapter is for Aurora Borealis and Livia Carica, both of whom said it may be "Feeding Sherlock," but it really, really was John's turn to be fed. _


	14. Chapter 14

_**Warning for rimming. A veritable ode to rimming. And nursing. And a bendy almost!appearance of something else. I don't even know anymore…**_

"Can't you make yourself _taller,_ John?"

It all started because Sherlock Holmes is embarrassingly easy to break.

"So help me I'll eat the _kidneys _of the next—" dramatic air quotes "—'police officer' who texts me—" more air quotes "—a 'clue.'"

For all the vast length of the man, for all the drama he trails with him every where he goes, you get the impression he's impenetrable as brick.

"When I said I needed quiet, Mrs. Hudson, that included you keeping your _breathing_ low enough so only the deaf _two_ flats over hear it."

Yet Sherlock's train of thought can be derailed by a passing glance. His temper unhinged by someone's ill-timed cough. In seconds he can synthesize a dozen datum into a narrative whole but sometimes he fails to get the correct sum of two plus twenty.

"Oh Mr. Chatterjee I assure you the sandwich was—what's the word, what _is_ the word—_unbelievable."_

To be fair, Sherlock didn't mean to poison himself.

"Why is that dog looking at me that way?"

For all the experiments he runs, for all the terrible fumes he breathes, Sherlock's rarely managed to actually envenom his own body. He _has_ managed to accidentally set fire to a fire extinguisher, unintentionally stab an MP in the arse with a Botox-filled hypodermic, and mistakenly email a photo of his beribboned erection to his mother.

"Don't be so clumsy with my _gloves_ John, they're a special powder-free, chemical-resistant, nitrile-coated pair meant for refined experimentation, not the plebian chore of _chopping onions._"

_Anyway,_ the point is, Sherlock rarely gets sick from his eccentric experiments, which is possibly why he thought nothing of simmering a coal-tar derivative and bisulphate of baryta on the hob for 30 minutes, adding a touch of barium sulfide and a skosh of denatured alcohol, all the while quietly (temporarily) poisoning himself with the noxious brew and completely disabling his verbal impulse control—and that control was small, weak, and enfeebled to begin with.

"Why on earth are you looking at me with that look, John?"

Yes, sometimes Sherlock is ridiculously easy to break.

...

Gloved right on up to his elbows with Sherlock's precious nitrile whatsits, fist clenched around a half-shredded carrot, John Watson glared at his lover, took a deep breath, and began counting to ten—

"And if you for one moment think—"

To eigh—

"—I don't know what you're—"

To fou—

"—doing with that produce_—"_

_That's it._

John slammed a dull knife on a scarred counter top, stomped around the kitchen table, and loomed over his seated love.

"This look? Why am I looking at you with _this _look?" John stood tall, waved a carrot combatively. "Because, _Sherlock,_ in the last two hours you've insulted Mrs. Hudson, said rude things to the neighbor's dog, and disparaged your future dinner—no, I don't care what you think I'm trying to hide in it—" Suddenly alert, John put the carrot behind his back as if Sherlock hadn't seen it.

_"Anyway,_ you've either finally gone off the deep end or according to the nice doctor I talked with at the Poisons Information Service, you've finally done yourself a mischief, probably with that terrible stew you had bubbling on the hob this morning."

Though seated and a good foot lower than his loomy love, Sherlock looked down his nose self-righteously. "That _dog_ breathes funny and looks like a _cat,_ Mrs. Hudson sorted the post so all of the bills were upside down in relation to the advertisements, and—what now?"

"You've _poisoned_ yourself Sherlock. As in absorbed into your person a substance which has made you a mouthy, discourteous, and ill-mannered."

"You realize discourteous and ill-mannered are the same thin—"

"—if you do not shut it right now and stay shut until the poison's out of your system

I'll tie you down and gag you."

Sherlock made an arrogant noise, opened his pretty little mouthy mouth and—

John put his hand over it.

Sherlock blinked, took a quick, shuddery breath, and said nothing.

John nodded curtly. "Good. That's good. Yes. _Thank_ you." And then he took his hand away.

"I know you _think_ you're the stronger of the two of us because of that time you carried me after the Pekinese mauled my foot, but really John, if you think you could—"

John put his hand over Sherlock's mouth, geared up to unleash a string of ghastly swearing but—

—realized that Sherlock had shut up again.

John took his hand away from Sherlock's mouth.

"—make me stop talking then I'll just have to—"

Doctorly hand over detectivey mouth. Silence. Doctorly hand removed from detectivey mouth.

"—disabuse you of this—"

John muzzled his lover again. "Oh dear god."

Sherlock blinked.

"You _actually_ can't stop." John took a deep, wondering breath. "Sherlock, you've…you've sort of given yourself a kind of Tourette's Syndrome."

Sherlock said nothing. John removed his hand.

"That could potentially be very—"

John put his hand back over Sherlock's mouth. Sherlock sighed.

"If I take my hand off your mouth right now and you can stay silent I will personally go to St. Bart's and collect that bucket of left feet Molly said you could have."

Sherlock sat up tall.

"I will also feed you a loganberry jam and sticky toffee pudding dinner via my mouth."

Sherlock's eyes got wide and bright.

"And then I'll take off all my clothes and do anything you tell me to—sexual or otherwise—for the rest of the night."

John could feel Sherlock's jaw go a little slack and his plush mouth form a nice little O.

"But only if you stay utterly silent when I remove my hand. If you don't…I don't."

Sherlock's eyes shifted back and forth quickly, evidence that his brain was whirring, spinning in place, about to pop its clutch.

"All right?"

Sherlock nodded vigorously, and it says much that John didn't know—would never know—what thrilled his sweetheart most, the thought of the feet, the sweets, or the sex.

"I am about to remove my hand from your mouth and what I need to hear is exactly nothing. Nothing at all. Not a sigh. Not a giggle. Not a single word. For ten seconds."

Everyone absorbed this information. Then John lifted his hand from Sherlock's mouth one finger at a time, until his entire—

"Get the feet now. Right now. They belonged to a tribe of barefoot nuns—are nuns a tribe? Or a flock? Anyway, about the pudding, I want it to be warm. Not cold, not hot, _warm._ And when you say sexual or otherwise—"

John may have been a little bit forceful with the re-application of his hand. His sweetie winced. "Oh god."

Sherlock's eyes shouted: What? _What?_

"This poison? It's made you domineering—more domineering—_and_ suggestible."

Sherlock thought about this. John thought about this. Then John had another thought when he felt the shoving. The squirming. The wetness.

"Sherlock."

What? _What?_

"Uh. I think this has made you domineering, suggestible. And _oral."_

John removed his hand from Sherlock's mouth to hear his reply.

"Did they say how long the contaminate would stay in my system because now that you mention it I'm feeling a little bit obsessed with the idea of the feet and the toffee pudding and frankly I'm a little alarmed about where I'm taking that obsession—" Sherlock tried hard to keep his gaze level but it went—*bam*—to John's crotch and then back again.

Here's the thing: Sometimes knowing what your problem is _makes your problem worse._ Expect side effects and what do you know, you get side effects. Kind of like that.

"—and also I'd like you to know that right now this absolute second in which I'm speaking I'm trying to not talk but I can't. I'm trying. I can't. Nnnng—" Sherlock bit his own lips but his lips vanquished his teeth and so "—John, make it stop. I…John…John…do something John. I need you to—" Sherlock took a deep, sharp breath. "—give me something to do with my—"

John shoved the carrot in Sherlock's mouth.

Sherlock grunted in relief.

John blinked at Sherlock. Sherlock blinked at John.

"Clearly we need to keep your mouth covered or your mouth full."

John nodded at his own diagnosis. Sherlock nodded back. Then bit the carrot.

John experienced a moment of enlightenment.

Ordinarily Sherlock did not willingly consume corn, carrots, or peas unless John 'hid' them in the pasta sauce or on those little pizza things Sherlock liked. With an all-purpose nod John turned with a decisive click of the heel, Sherlock rose…

"Did they say how long the—"

John switched off the hob (on which gently burbled pasta sauce with shredded carrots and mashed peas 'hidden' in it; this was successfully accomplished because there was enough sugar to scandalize even a novice home cook), Sherlock right at his back…

"—effects would last? Because now that I think about it there's an experiment I—"

John tugged open the fridge…

"—could do concerning how much voluntary control a person can exert over theoretically involuntary—"

Without turning around the good doctor shoved a stick of celery in Sherlock's mouth. Sherlock's mouth received the celery and was glad of the celery. Sherlock's mouth began masticating the celery. John turned back to the fridge, trying not to get excited as he looked for more healthy food.

He did not move fast enough.

"I'm not actually _enjoying_ this whole produce ploy you know, so if you think—"

Without turning around John shoved half a piece of wholemeal bread into Sherlock's mouth and he's lucky he'd finger-smeared jam on because Sherlock was about to spit it down the back of John's neck like a six foot toddler. Instead, detecting the sugar, he masticated lustily.

It didn't last. Then again nothing in space-time manages to keep Sherlock's mouth shut for long.

"There were those strange spongy-chocolately things Mrs. Hudson's cousin brought over from Austra—"

Without turning John shoved a spongy-chocolatey thing—"Lamingtons, Sherlock, they're called—ouch!"—into Sherlock's mouth.

Chewing vigorously and leaning against John's back, Sherlock looked into the refrigerator and was two seconds from making pronouncements, when John shoved a Brussels sprout between his lover's lips. It had jam on it.

Sherlock chewed in silence and John wondered why he hadn't long ago simply smeared jam on everything—vitamins, vegetables, pasta—_everything._

"John—"

Another Brussels sprout with jam. More chewing, swallowing, and then, "What do—_ermf."_

It was disgusting, he knew it was disgusting, but frankly it was _right there,_ so yes, John took the half block of Irish butter, smeared jam on it, and shoved it into Sherlock's mouth. Pressed against John's back and gazing in that fridge as if the interior contained a corpse, Sherlock sucked contentedly.

John shook his head. Wouldn't it just figure he hadn't gone shopping for days and there was little left in the fridge but tiny tubs of yogurt that three days from now would do a marvelous job of pinch-hitting for the poison required in an experiment?

"John, I think maybe—"

The good doctor sucked in a scandalized breath, turned. "Sherlock Holmes you did not just eat half a block of butter in twenty seconds."

Sherlock waved the butter in the air. "It needs more jam. And also I'm beginning to wonder if it was the fumes that drugged me or if perhaps it was more of a contact high."

John lunged toward the sink.

"It's a very interesting question really, and I'm certain given just a little time I can recreate the experiment, but I'll definitely need much more—"

John yanked out a dirty spoon.

"—bisulphate of baryta and possibly a bigger pot in which to mix the ingredients do you think we could get a bigger stove top even if we can't I think I should be able—"

The good doctor shoved a spoonful of jam into Sherlock's motor mouth, turned toward the cabinetry and began yanking cupboards open.

Behind him Sherlock sucked noisily.

Dry oats, dry pasta, salt, pepper, Marmite, bananas that had seen better days…_John you lazy git._

With a harumph the good doctor turned and looked at Sherlock. Sherlock moved the spoon from one side of his mouth to the other and started _biting_ it, teeth clenching so hard John feared for the man's enamel. The good doctor lunged again, pried open his lover's maw—"Good god man, release!"—and rescued the flatware.

"John no, no John, John John, John—"

John pushed his index finger into Sherlock's mouth right on up to the last knuckle. John needed to _think_ but he couldn't think with all the _noise._

And then he couldn't think because Sherlock was sucking and sucking and then he was _tonguing_ and kind of fellating and working that finger as if with just the right encouragement the thing might, you know, ejaculate.

John tried tugging his finger free but Sherlock followed it and sucked harder.

"Sherlock."

_Finger._

"Sherlock."

_Finger._

"Sherlock."

The finger. It was Sherlock's panacea, his reason, his cure. It was the answer to questions he hadn't even asked.

"Sherlock let go."

Sherlock didn't let go, just sort of hunched over, eyes a little glazed. The finger. The Finger. _The Finger._

He tried to say the word but he couldn't say the word because he was too busy sucking on the manifestation of the word to discuss its glory and so he continued to—

"Sherlock."

—suck and maybe he made a small sound that was kind of a sigh and—

_"Sherlock."_

—maybe he started to tenderly teethe and—

And finally the penny dropped.

There was no more food to feed Sherlock. Not unless John was going to get the rest of the butter in him with a side of dry pasta (yes, John's forgotten about the pasta sauce on the stove; John currently has very extenuating circumstances and they are six feet tall and extremely_ oral)._

So it was time to fill Sherlock's motor mouth with other things.

Two seconds later Sherlock opened glazed eyes, the index finger of a nitrile-coated glove dangling from his mouth, the good doctor himself gone.

...

"I need them John. John. John John John John JohnJohnJohnJohnJoooohn…"

Climbing the stairs to the rare-used upstairs bedroom—John had a sense there was soon going to be a lot of _sound—_the good doctor reflected that if you hear your own name often enough it sounds like it belongs to an entirely different language.

"Fingers, fingers, I need fingers, John."

This was not the first time Sherlock had said those words. It _was_ the first time he meant that he required ones still attached to their source.

"Fingers, John, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, _fingers."_

Climbing those stairs right behind his lover, Sherlock's own surprisingly chilly digits danced over the good doctor's spine, as if the touch could magically cause fingers to appear there. This terrible miracle did not occur, so something much more common place did.

"If you think about it, think about it, think think _think…_fingers could be—"

John stopped, turned, braced for the inevitable.

Sherlock walked face first into John's chest—"Mmfff!"

John opened his mouth, probably about to caution Sherlock against treading on his last nerve when he was about to sexually service him, but something _else_ inevitable happened just then.

Sherlock started nosing his nose across John's shirt front.

The good doctor forgot what he was going to say as he watched that nose go in search of, in search of…_there!_

Through a thin cotton tee Sherlock found the wee swell of a nipple and with a satisfied grunt latched on.

"Sher—fufflshhh."

_Nipples._

"Shhhhh…"

_Nipples_

"…eeerrr…"

Nipples were nirvana, they were beautiful unfurled buds, warm as blood, delicate as…as…as _nipples._ Here, this, these were Sherlock's antidote.

"…lllock."

John is a sucker for sucking, he'll admit that right now. It's not a physical thing, he's pretty sure his fingers, toes, nipples, and neck are no more sensitive than the next man's, but there's just something primal—

A dark, curly head tilted and John saw a contented face, a jaw working.

—about Sherlock sucking.

And John took that infantile sucking like a man. Standing straight-backed and tall on those creaky old stairs, John offered up his body in the manner of a man who has grown used to a certain amount of, um, self-sacrifice in the cause of domestic harmony, a man familiar with frequently, uh, submitting…

Sherlock huffed a soft, sweet breath.

…to his lover's intense needs…

Sherlock made a sound that sounded an awful lot like cooing.

… his wild demands, his unpredictable drives, asking absolutely n-n-nothing for…

Sherlock groped around for his own cock and grabbed hold of himself through his trousers.

…himself except maybe a little kiss and cuddle now and again, maybe a little…

Then Sherlock shoved his head up under John's shirt and when that actual hot nipple slid into his overworked mouth Sherlock keened as if coming.

John's knee gave out.

Instantly four hands reached to save him, two clutching for railing and wall, the larger pair clamping around one small man's waist.

"Shhher," John tried again, hoping that single syllable was enough to convey his mighty desire to continue north up the stairs so he could then immediately head south. So to speak.

Beneath John's t-shirt _Sher,_ however, was intent on other things.

Pulling away from John's nipple, the good detective began rooting around with that snub nose in his dark cotton cocoon until…_there!_

Sherlock latched on to the other tiny bud with a high groan.

John's other knee gave out.

At this point there were no more hands to save him so down he went, his bum landing with a quiet thud on their first floor landing.

Arms splayed behind him, John was unsurprised to find a big head still bumping around beneath a layer of cloth. Sherlock had not only fallen with him, he'd managed to stay latched on, too.

_Latched on, latched on, latched on. _Why did those two words cause John's cock to shift inquisitively inside his pants?

John didn't know, didn't want to know. Would knowing change anything? It would not. So instead he simply thought about what was going on beneath his stretched-out t-shirt and what was going on under there was _fucking magical._

There were sharp teeth tenderly biting. A squirming tongue lavishing tight skin with warmth and wetness. A mouth worth fucking _sucking_ at him. And a deep baritone moaning in breathy, high-pitched pleasure.

Head lolling on his neck, John would probably have just let all of that be enough for a good long while but maybe Sherlock was starting to get hypoxia in there because he began squirming from crown to cock, trying, John thought, to penetrate—well, anything.

"Sher…Sssh…mmmmm," John gave up on the whole complete sentence thing. Instead he simply tugged off his t-shirt, turned, and with two suddenly dodgy knees, he simply started crawling toward the bedroom.

_Oooooooh._

Speaking of suggestible.

Sherlock clambered onto the landing and, though both his legs worked just fine, he crawled behind that beautiful, tempting, _succulent_ behind and even as he chanted "John, John, John, John, John," he slicked his tongue around his mouth and he knew, he knew that _that_ was what he needed-wanted-had to have…

"Have, have, John…John…"

The bedroom was still (John wasn't, tugging his clothes off with wild abandon) and quiet (Sherlock wasn't, resorting to a babble of lusty nonsense) and the moment John crawled onto the bed Sherlock flipped him onto his belly, grabbed a double fistful of ex-army doctor arse and separated—

"Hell no!"

Quite possibly partially blind from want, it took Sherlock one full second to track his sweetie as he bounded from the bed.

"If that's what you need then I need—" John started inching toward the attached toilet.

"Don't go," mourned the man on the bed, voice as woeful as if the good doctor were marching to war, not to the loo.

"I can't wait John you know I can't wait and it's not me being me for once except of course it is, I bet your response to those fumes would have been lip-licking and jaw-clenching and scowling in my general direction but that doesn't matter what matters is that I so badly need to—"

John shoved Sherlock's fingers in Sherlock's mouth.

Everyone's brows shot up when this actually worked to _keep the man quiet._

It also worked at other things. Groping his own cock briefly John said, "Sher," and vacated the scene with alacrity.

Ablutions that would ordinarily have taken a few minutes took less than half of one. Call it twenty-five seconds give or take a frantic two. From the other room Sherlock said nothing, though John heard the occasional grunt and moan, which only served to move him along more quickly.

Pleased with his speed, the good doctor reentered the bedroom only to be presented with a sight he'd seen exactly never.

Actually, for very long seconds John wasn't quite sure _what_ he was seeing. And then he knew but didn't believe it. And then he believed it and became amazed he hadn't seen it before. And then John unhinged his jaw and let it drop clear down to his breast bone.

Because there on the bed was a man trying to bend himself double to _get at his own cock_ with his mouth.

Right about then John had himself a thinky thought. Why, when he's watched Sherlock masturbate with his brother's brolly, seen him finger-fuck his own arse, been sucked off by him beneath a restaurant table, why after all that and more did the sight on the bed scandalize him so much he went stock-still on the spot?

John had no idea, not one, not even a fraction of one. And ultimately it didn't matter. Because John stood breathless in that bedroom doorway and he _waited to see if Sherlock could actually do it._

After a riveting fifteen seconds of grunting exertion the conclusion in both their minds was this: Must try again. Later.

Shaking his head to clear it from a fog of lust and unbidden visions of Sherlock orally getting himself off, John drifted toward the bed in a hormone-addled daze.

"Sher," he said, again unable to complete the thought, but half the thought was enough apparently for the moment he saw his sweetie walking toward him, cock raised in a smart salute, _Sher_ swarmed off the bed and tackled his lover to the rugged floor.

And without so much as a "This all right for you darling?" Sherlock flipped him onto his belly again and he spread him.

If the phrase 'latched on' gets John's cock stirring, the concept, the words, and the actual action of _spreading John_ are all it takes for Sherlock to become so aroused he can watch himself actually leaking.

Maybe the toxins were at last washing from his system. Maybe his desire was so big it stopped his tongue, or just maybe he'd surrendered all higher function to his animal brain and that brain wanted just one thing.

To feast.

Sherlock started as he always did when offering his lover this kind of adoration: He bowed over him and he tenderly bit.

Two hundred pounds: That's the bite pressure the human jaw can exert. Perhaps that's why some are aroused by a tender nip of teeth along delicate flesh—it's the _control_ that tempts, it's the willful _restraint _that teases. Or maybe it just feels good when pearly whites…

"Ooooh yes."

…dig in to blood-blushed and pliant flesh.

As his lover nipped, John curved his spine, arched his back again and again, a sinuous wave that invited more biting, harder nips.

Sherlock gratefully lavished him with these as if that was everything, all of it. Yet they both knew what was coming.

Though not just yet.

_Sher…_

John didn't even try to say it this time, he simply thought it, yet even in his head it was breathless and needy.

So Sherlock gave him what he needed.

Because he knew it would cross wires in both their heads Sherlock did it again, he _nosed_ around, pressing his face against the curve of John's bum as if searching. He made questing sounds, grunted inquisitively, pushing the sharp planes of his face against warm skin and then he bit again, a little harder, because he loves the feel of muscle through John's flesh, so different from his own arse which, he's pretty sure, is simply flesh. _Acres_ of it.

Never mind.

Searching, searching, Sherlock grunted and bit and his long-fingered hands slid slow along the backs of John's thighs, then between them, and when finally he parted those fine legs the search was quite over and with a soft, soft, softer still sigh Sherlock nosed himself right between John's arse cheeks and he started to _feed._

The first time they did this John was sure he wouldn't…couldn't…just wasn't going to…

He was wrong.

And maybe "wrong" is what made this exactly right, John doesn't know. All he knows is he's a doctor and he never thought that this would be something he would give or get but he does both and every time, every single time, he's amazed his body doesn't just respond a little, it's fucking _lavish._

Hips cocked high, John opened himself wide, made himself as available as he could, and he pushed between his legs with the palm of his hand as Sherlock pushed the tip of his tongue into him, so soft and slick and insistent he slid right in.

Then out again.

This is what Sherlock does, of course. He gives and gives and then he _stops giving,_ because that's what makes getting again feel so good.

So instead of poking that squirmy tongue back inside he licked, bobbing his head with the steady rise and fall of John's hips as he humped his own hand, and then that seemed like a damn fine idea, so Sherlock wriggled a long arm between carpet and cock, which left him with just one hand with which to spread John, but John was doing a mighty fine job of spreading himself, back arched, knees braced against the floor and judging from the sounds he was making Sherlock was certain that if he just slid on inside again John would come so Sherlock…

…didn't do that.

Instead he went back to biting, little nibbles, but these much closer to the sensitive pucker at the center of John's bobbing arse. The good doctor remarked on these ministrations with a softly susurrated, "Sh, Sh, Sh," and wanked a little faster.

Sherlock responded by pushing between John's butt cheeks with the bridge of his nose, demanding. Obligingly the doctor canted his hips higher, opened his legs wider.

Not enough.

Sherlock grunted, high and insistent and pushed harder until at last John slid his knees under him.

And then, left shoulder and cheek propped on the floor, John reached round with his right hand and _spread himself wider._

And that was the end of that.

Sherlock groaned, clamped his mouth over John, and pushed his tongue all the way in. He then proceeded to thrust into and out of that tight little ring with the same rhythm with which John masturbated.

_John, John, John…_ He doesn't need to say it any more, the toxin's gone from his system finally, but he ever and always wants to voice this one simple, perfect word.

Most days he says it with his mouth, some days with deed, like right now by spreading just that little bit more what's already open and offered, Sherlock covered John's moderate bum with his own immoderately large hands and, thumbs either side of that squirming tongue, he opened John up, he went deeper, and there and then John groaned and started to come.

Sherlock went still, focused and intent and so very aroused by the feeling of John's body clamping down on the tiny bit of flesh he had inside him.

It took awhile for the aftershocks to fade and for that long minute the good detective remained motionless. When finally the spasms were done Sherlock knew John's bad shoulder would be aching so he didn't give him time to focus on the pain.

Instead he did it again, third time's the charm, he flipped John over. And there it was, he knew it, John had managed to cup his hand over his cock as he came, and so Sherlock ran long fingers through the wet and quite unceremoniously he pushed those fingers into John.

A gratifying twitch was the doctor's response and with that Sherlock withdrew, lined himself up, pushed himself in, and started to ride.

"Sherlock," John moaned, "Sh-Sh-_Sherlock."_

Maybe the poison really was a contact high and maybe John was the one looped now because he damn well didn't _shut it_ for the next four and one half minutes as Sherlock pushed into him slow and deep.

"Now, now, now, now, now Sh-Sheeeer…mmmmm…n-n-n-ooooooow…oh, oh, oh…"

Giddy with the garrulous input Sherlock listened to those sexy babblings and kept listening and probably got distracted with the listening but it was good, it was fine, John brought him right round with a slow slide of two fingers into Sherlock's mouse-quiet mouth.

And that really was the end of that, with the groan of one simple, perfect word Sherlock pressed the long length of his body against his lover and started to come.

"John…John…John."

_Well then. This is the longest _Feeding Sherlock_ so far. The coal-tar derivative and bisulphate of baryta et cetera were mentioned in "The Chemistry of Sherlock Holmes," I invented the disabling effects mixing the two would have. Thank you Tony for that information! And thank you times infinite to Livia Carica for giving me the nursing kink. I think some anonymous angel's responsible for the whole rimming thing._


End file.
